


what a wicked game to play (to make me feel this way)

by taylorswift



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Another Em oneshot everyone buckle your seatbelts, Even when it wasn't coming it still was, F/M, Friends to Lovers, It's The Hunger Games okay this is not The Wizard of Oz, My other WIPs have despised me for neglecting them in favor of this, Nat and Clint are victors from different years and districts, Petition for me to replace Suzanne Collins or Kevin Feige, Shit Gets Dark, Slow Burn, The epitome of my brand, This has been a long time coming let's not even pretend, This took 3+ months for me to finish so the fact I'm posting at all is a miracle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 60,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24957505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorswift/pseuds/taylorswift
Summary: After you win the Games, you lose.ORthe hunger games au.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 34
Kudos: 85





	what a wicked game to play (to make me feel this way)

**Author's Note:**

> like nearly all of my greatest hits, this one came to me in the shower. like 100% of all my greatest hits, it quickly spiraled out of control the second i opened the word doc. i will be scathingly honest with you all: i have not written clintasha outside of my trial by fire universe (which doesn't count, and if you've ever read tbf you know why) in 5 years. 2019 was like a creative Awakening for me; i really wanted to write clintasha but never did because, despite clintasha being my ultimate otp and having read approximately a bajillion fics, they have always been my challenge ship to write. i have mega self-doubt when it comes to them because i just LOVE THEM SO MUCH and i don't want to be like some people *side eyes* and not do them their justice? i feel like i can never nail down their voices properly, but, it's all about baby steps (even if it has been a whole fucking year of putting it off + all of the writer block WALLS corona has built) so here we are! me, writing my otp in an au based off of my other god tier fandom. do y'all expect ANYTHING less from my trick ass at this point?? i honestly have nothing to say for myself either - i think i blacked out while writing the majority of this. the remaining part i was conscious for, i was just screaming to amanda, gracie and claire via imessage about the 900 different ways i wanted to tell this story. nothing out of my ordinary. 
> 
> **disclaimer:** this is up to its eyeballs in the thg universe, where there are mentions of forced prostitution, drug use, violence, and character death. please take care of you first, babes.
> 
>  **songs to listen to while you read:** titular song (keep reading to find out), kingdom by charli xcx, dark in my imagination by of verona, blood by whipped cream, waiting game by banks, mercy by hurts, nightmare by halsey, quit by cashmere cat x ariana grande, bloodsport by raleigh ritchie, losing your memory by ryan star, symmetry (dark version) by syml, without you by ursine vulpine and annaca, people you know by selena gomez, saturn by sleeping at last, crazy in love by the eden project ft. leah kelly, ghostin by ariana grande, ashley by halsey, decode by paramore, let it burn by red, more by halsey.
> 
> title is from ursine vulpine and annaca's cover of 'wicked game.' i'm lurking on twitter @emswifts at all hours of the day nowadays so please, feel free to come hang out and talk og6 with me or bombard me with any fic requests you might have. additionally, there are tons of headcanons i have for this au regarding arenas and other characters (and, really, an au of this au lmao) so if there's anything you wanna know, just shout, i'm happy to indulge! happy reading xx

Everyone knows that the double-digit districts are the underdogs every year in the Games. The winners are in abundance from 1, 2, and 4, a sprinkling of lucky ones at random across the remaining districts thanks to Gamemaker engineering or dumb fucking luck.

Clint does not anticipate to be an exception to a rule. When he gets reaped, he knows that the odds are not in his favor. There are few victors from Ten. His only advantage is that he's not from Eleven or Twelve, where the odds amount to the wind blowing through the space in between your fingers. 

He thinks that Coulson, the male mentor for Ten, is awfully optimistic for a guy that won a death competition. Clint's too young to have remembered his Games, so he's not quite sure how the guy made it out on top _and_ ended up like this – most of the victors are all fucked in the head in one way or another.

"What's your story?" Coulson asks him on the train ride, like they can afford trivialities at a time like this.

Clint is dumbfounded by the question. His story? He doesn't have a story. He's seventeen and his whole life up to this point has been a half-assed attempt to stay out of trouble (usually to no avail) and slaughtering cattle. None of that is going to deter from the new inevitable.

"I like getting to know my tributes," Coulson explains, likely after registering the expression on Clint's face. "If I know you, then I know how to help you get through this." _Translation: I'm the type to hold my tributes' hands as I guide them to the slaughter._

"Just got dealt a shit hand of cards," Clint settles on after the hanging pause in the air starts to asphyxiate him, the only noise coming from the slight rattle of the compartment's furniture as their train careens through the desert.

Coulson's lips press down into a thin smile. "Unfortunately so."

Surprisingly – and fortuitously – there is no fluff or bullshit with Coulson; he uses the remainder of the train ride into the Capitol to give Clint the overview on what's awaiting him. Everything about him remains steady. All calm, to the point. Amicable, even. No indication whatsoever that this monotonously morbid routine rattles him in any way.

He could always have it worse in the mentor department, he reasons with himself. The female mentor is Melinda May, whose Games he's also too young to remember, but _her_ reputation precedes her. She's more commonly known as the Cavalry. The people in the Capitol say the name in the same breath as an exaltation. The people in the districts say it like they're conjuring a malevolent entity used to scare children at their bedtime. Coulson might baffle him across the board, but Clint is concrete on how he feels in regards to May: she genuinely scares him.

Not that any of the experience is meant to be found enjoyable, but Clint doesn't do well with the parade. He loathes feeling like a peacock, plucked and preened to do laps around Tribute Circle in the utterly ridiculous outfits the stylists have concocted for them. Training is a bit better, and Coulson finds out after the first day of training that he's got a tribute with an advantage. It's the first time Clint sees a light flicker on behind his eyes.

"You didn't tell me you could shoot," he brings up at dinner that night, when May and her tribute have retired elsewhere to do some consulting (or in May's case, look intimidating as fuck). 

Clint, who has never known what a full meal looks like, is a bit more preoccupied with the lamb stew than Coulson's sudden spark of hope. "I'm okay," he mumbles through a mouthful of food.

"That's not what I heard. You're good enough that two of the Career kids had Fury ask me to get you to consider joining their alliance."

"Okay." Clint lifts his head begrudgingly, the hand holding his spoon halted in mid-air. "So I'm pretty good with a bow and arrow."

"Where'd you learn how to shoot?"

"Around." He learned from one of the guys on the ranches that took him in after he and Barney were on their own, who'd known his mama and taken an ounce of pity on them and their fate of the orphanage. He doesn't expound because Coulson's all about the fucking story-sharing, and that's not a road he is looking to revisit being so close to the doorstep of his own demise. "I work in the slaughterhouses back home."

Coulson carefully sets his fork down on the table, wiping at the corners of his mouth with the napkin. "I'm going to give you another chance," he says nonchalantly, but Clint can hear the threats in the folds of his voice. "To tell me what I need to know about you in order to help you, or else you're going to die in that arena."

His grey eyes are clear when he looks at Clint, sharp enough to pierce through his shoulders and pin him to the wall. He might be pleasant, but he's had his fill of Games for a lifetime. "What are your strengths?" Coulson asks again. It is not a question.

"I don't miss. Ever."

Coulson passes him an untouched knife from his place setting. "Show me."

He only breaks eye contact from Coulson for the brief second it takes to chuck the knife haphazardly at the wall. It's a sloppy throw by his standards, but his one constant in life is impeccable aim. The knife embeds into the wall a few inches away from the ear of the Avox standing silently with her head bowed.

Stupidly, he wonders if the Avox will later try and claim he was trying for a practice kill before remembering that the Avox won't be making claims any time soon. Or ever again, for that matter.

Coulson seems completely unfazed. "I see why the Careers would want you after seeing your target practice." It's gratuitous to call it that; it had been all of two shots, one to gain a feel for the bow-making in the Capitol, and another just for kicks. Then the Career kids were back to claim their turf at weapons and Clint had moved on, wanting nothing to do with them. 

"I don't wanna buddy up with them," Clint shoots down.

"Not saying you should. Alliances are tricky ground to walk on, and it's hard to trust a Career."

That, Clint knows: he's seen how the pack dissolves year after year if Gamemaker forces don't clear them out first. 

"But?"

"But I'd recommend steering clear of archery until your private session." Coulson picks up his wine glass with a half shrug. "If they know you're a threat and you don't take them up on the alliance, you'll be among the first ones they take out of the equation."

"They wouldn't catch me."

"Arrogance is sharper than a knife," Coulson responds. "Don't let that be what kills you."

Coulson, for some reason, must see something in Clint (that Clint is roughly ninety-percent sure does not exist), because in that diluted, saccharine way of his, he refuses to give up on him. Clint wonders if he's tired of constantly having to watch his kid die on screen year after year in a new arena. 

He offers advice, and Clint begins to take it once he sees the way the Careers pay him no attention after he ignores archery on the second day. Clint's good at taking direction when it comes from someone he respects, and even if he reads it more in a vein of suggestion, Coulson won this thing before. He has yet to bullshit Clint once. Coulson advises he focus more on the things he could stand having extra practice in. Identifying the safe plants from the silent killers, sparring with the trainers for some hand-to-hand refreshers (Clint enjoys this the most, even if it's not nearly as dirty as the fights he'd get himself into back home), starting a fire, the basics of survival.

Coulson talks to him like he thinks he's got a shot. Not just some embellished, placating measure to line the hard, cold bed of death, but a _real_ chance. Balancing on the precipice, of course, that Clint doesn't accidentally get himself killed first.

In his private training session with the Gamemakers, he follows Coulson's advice and abandons everything else in favor for the bow and arrow. He makes sure the fifteen minutes leave no room for error or confusion: the odds may not be in his favor, but he is not another hopeless pair of limbs stumbling into their arena.

Most of them seem too drunk at that point to care, but they give him an eight anyways.

Interviews go roughly the same as the parade. It's the façade, the glamour of the Games that Clint is having a hard time stomaching.

"It's a television show," Coulson exhales exasperatedly after they've retired back to their floor and Clint is grumbling about the fuck of it all. "Caesar can sell a rock as a diamond. That's what they pay him for. This is what they care about; what can they feed to the audience, what's the newest and shiniest distraction to take away from everything else? Take one look at me, or May, or any of us and ask yourself, do you think we won because the Capitol thought we were _great people_ that deserved to escape the death sentence?"

"Well, you might have, but the jury's out on the Cavalry."

Coulson's face darkens for the first time, and the drastic shift in his demeanor that Clint didn't know possible drags a chill down his spine. "Don't call her that."

"Sorry," he mutters.

Coulson pulls his composure back together with a deep breath. "I won because I played the game. If you have an angle, they might give you more screen time, but it doesn't matter if you refuse to play. That's all they want. Some people get lost in playing and never fully leave. We all leave a little piece of us in that arena, bur your options are some or nothing – and trust me, 'some' looks different for everyone." He pauses, a melancholy smile twitching at the edges of his mouth. "It's why I like to get to know my kids. It helps if somebody remembers the before once after comes along."

He rests a hand on Clint's shoulder. "Your training score is going to draw in the sponsors. You've got a chance, Barton. Don't waste it just because you're too tangled up in the red tape that you miss a spear to the stomach."

For the first time, Clint doesn't wait for Couslon to freely give advice. He asks for it. "So what do I do?"

"They're the Hunger Games, Clint. You play." 

So he turns himself off when the pedestal rises the next day in the arena – abandoned carnival, points to the Gamemakers for creativity – and two weeks later, it earns him the crown for the Fifty-Sixth Hunger Games.

He just forgets to bring the switch to turn himself back on again with him.

♛ ♛ ♛

There isn't anything waiting on him in Ten when the train rolls into the station. Nothing worth his while, anyways – there's a giant crowd waiting to catch a glimpse of his arrival, the first victor Ten has had since May, but it doesn't mean anything to him. The faces and empty cheers that greet him back to a life he left behind aren't familiar, aren't the ones he loves. His own family has been paying their monthly rent to a wooden box six feet underground for years now, and it is a strong over-statement to say he loved them.

He moves into the house next door to Coulson in Victor's Village, where sunlight filters in through dusty glass window panes and the echoes of silence are louder than that of his footsteps down the empty halls. It's fully furnished, which is a good thing. He doesn't plan to bring a single thing from his parent's house through the doors. Too many memories.

The last thing he needs is for his bad memories before the Games to make friends with his bad memories during the Games.

Clint closes in on himself, locks the doors, and lets the loneliness swallow him. There are nights when he doesn't sleep at all, instead perching in the second story window and watching the empty night sky for hours. On the nights he does sleep, the night terrors strait jacket him in his sheets and the screams leave his throat sore for days.

They all look like the arena. The one-ring big top tent that housed the Cornucopia, golden and gleaming in its invitation to the slaughter. The hot, dry days and the dust that irritated his eyes with every gust of unforgiving wind. The hall of mirrors that he had known better than to trust as a place for shelter, the very same that the girl from Ten met her demise in when she impaled herself on a giant shard of glass sticking out that she never saw coming (he only knew about this one when they showed it during the recap special with Caesar Flickerman, and despite not even knowing the girl beyond her name, it twisted his stomach to watch). The lion and tiger mutts that were unleashed and devoured four of the tributes. The high wires that electrocuted anyone who sought shelter up above and out of sight – that one had almost gotten him thanks to the godawful sight-lines. The tornado that ripped through the arena like a chainsaw to wood.

The kids that he picked off from a distance, the ones that never saw their deaths coming to them until their worlds went black after the arrow went through their chests: they come to lick at the phantom cuts they deliver out of revenge, to strangle him in his sleep.

The ease in the fluid, sweeping motion of drawing the arrow and releasing it to end their lives, the detachment accredited to the range and anonymity of his kills.

The rewards from the Capitol for his kills: food and water, night vision glasses to help flourish the talent. The _stupid_ moniker they'd given him all because he played their game exceedingly well, well enough to be their newest and shiniest distraction. The silent killer, death from the shadows.

_Hawkeye._

He usually wakes up without the ability to decipher if real life is better or worse than the dreams.

♛ ♛ ♛

Coulson gives him a month to wallow before he picks the locks to the house (that, or he scales through an unlocked window, the man's determination goes unrivaled) and puts Clint back in his place in the same sanguine manner he does everything else.

He doesn't yell or slap him around or tell him to get a grip, that the sooner he accepts what happened in the Games the sooner he'll be able to resume living. He's just _there._ All the time.

He's a constant presence in Clint's house, never arriving at the same time or to accomplish the same thing twice. Clint knows why – it's so he can't figure out the routine and chop it off at the root. Coulson comes over to watch television in the living room, or to make lunch, or to tear down the fucking drywall in the kitchen for repairs (Clint finds his fingers itching for an arrow with that one). He's content to operate without a single exchange of words, too. It slowly (quickly) starts to drive Clint crazy, but telling Coulson to fuck off is a bad move.

After all, Coulson was the one who saved his sorry ass in the arena. He at least owes him that much, so he lets him Coulson-ify the place to his heart's desire while Clint takes to a tree in the backyard.

One afternoon, he invites Clint over for dinner at his place, to which Clint austerely declines. He misses the part where it is apparently non-negotiable, because Coulson is back on his doorstep a few hours later with a polite smile on his face.

"Maybe you respond better to violence," he notes cheerily before grabbing Clint by the arm, twisting him around, and pressing the point of a knife into the small of his back. It takes Clint off guard. Coulson, on the other hand, is not fazed. "I'll admit, I haven't done this in a while."

"Are you fucking insane?"

"Insane? No. Hungry? Yes. It's taking May ages to figure out how to fix the ham."

If he wanted to, he figures he could wrestle out of Coulson's grip with maybe only a nick or two. But Coulson doesn't give him any time to map out a plan of escape, pushing him forward down the steps and onto the gravel pathway.

Clint's willing to give him that one.

Sure enough, May is standing in Coulson's kitchen, frowning over a giant pot. "You did this wrong," she addresses Coulson without even bothering to look up, poking the contents of dinner with a wooden spoon.

Coulson drops Clint in a chair, removing the knife from its threatened place against him. Clint glances up expectantly, an eyebrow arched in question that Coulson ignores.

"I followed every direction."

"In what order?"

"The right one."

"Somehow, I remain a skeptic." May steps out of the way for Coulson, who peers down into the metal pot.

"May, this looks fine."

"You're gonna feed me and your victor slop? Touching, Coulson, even by your standards."

He clams up, taking the spoon from May without another word as he consults back with a sheet of paper sitting on the counter.

"I see you left the house," she comments as she crosses the room, finally acknowledging Clint's presence.

"Not by choice."

"Sad."

She lands on the opposite side of Coulson’s dining table with a fist clenched around the neck of a liquor bottle and a triad of glasses carefully balanced in the grip of her fingers. They slam onto the table's surface, the glasses rattling as they clink against one another. “You want a drink?” she asks Clint.

“May,” Coulson warns. “Don’t give my victor any more vices.”

May rolls her eyes, sliding one of the glasses towards Clint. She yanks the stopper off of the bottle and fills two, leaving the third one empty.

Whatever it is in the bottle goes down smooth, leaving a dull fire in the pit of his stomach. May reaches for the bottle again and pours herself a little extra as she makes herself comfortable in the chair across from Clint.

“Didn’t know you drank,” Clint comments, because unlike Coulson, May does _not_ create a comfortable silence and it’s making his skin itch.

Her face remains expressionless. “Could be worse. Could be morphling.”

“May,” Coulson forcefully sing-songs again. “Stop giving him ideas.”

“What?” May quips. “The Amazing Hawkeye’s got impeccable aim. He’d be fine if he took it up.”

“Don’t call me that,” Clint grumbles into his glass.

“Get used to it,” she replies, and Clint remembers who he’s talking to. He blanches, suddenly taking great interest in the amber liquid sparkling up at him.

She senses something has clicked for him, because she holds the bottle back out in offering. He downs the rest and sticks his glass closer out.

It is the closest he’s ever going to get to bonding with her.

(Some time later in the fall, when they're both sitting in Coulson's living room and considerably buzzed on moonshine, May tells him how she got the Cavalry nickname. She didn't know that she had landed in the final three at the time, a twelve year old from Four and an eighteen year old one from One. She'd been tracking the boy from One when she stumbled across him and the little girl in an alligator roll, each of them clawing for life. She jumped to the girl's defense and killed the boy, unable to stomach watching a child face a gory death the boy and his knives promised. It wasn't until his cannon went off that May realized the defenseless wisp of a girl wasn't all the frightened little lamb she'd played off as; she knew May was tracking the boy because she'd been doing some hunting of her own, knew May would get him out of her way because May had a soft spot for the kids, planned to use that weakness as the perfect strike for an easy kill. "It was her or me," May explains hollowly. "That's the ultimatum we all come to at the end, that we all have to carry after. Mine just happens to be a little girl who played me for a fool and was itching to gut me like a fish.")

♛ ♛ ♛

The dust of the Games settles into a new normal as the tree leaves begin to burn in shades of gold.

Clint still wakes up in the middle of the night from the nasty dreams his brain projects or finds sleepless nights, but he doesn't feel like that girl from Two who had a real pension for carving her kills beyond recognition has gotten to him. He has the rough stitches and scars but at least they're there, signaling that they're trying to hold something inside again. 

He takes Coulson's lead with the house and jumps into renovating things that are otherwise fine as they are. Now that his hours aren't filled with cattle, he's got to have something to push the days along and keep his hands busy. He fixes the leaking faucet in the kitchen, revamps the windows and breathes life back into the fireplace. One of the trees in his yard is chopped down, the wood used to make a new bow and set of arrows. He never strings up the bow, never fires it, still queasy at the thought of what the dull target of a tree trunk to morph into when fueled by the muscle memory of murder. It at least brings familiarity to see a bow hung on the wall, an arrow twirled between his fingers as he thinks.

They tell him he has to pick a talent, something that they can spoon-feed to the Capitolites that will rejuvenate his relevance over and over again once he is overshadowed by another victor. Pitching darts at a makeshift board in the kitchen, regrettably, will not constitute. Clint tells Phil that he'd like a guitar. He doesn't know if it'll be his talent; sure, Clint's not tone deaf and has pretty good pitch, but he's never played an instrument that wasn't a harmonica. (Harmonica does not constitute as a talent either.) When the president sends a guitar boasting of being made from exotic rosewood and pearl inlays right to his front door, it is the equivalent of receiving a bouquet of thorns, message received loud and clear. 

Coulson helps Clint with renovations when he'll accept it. Occasionally he'll accompany him into town – Coulson has seemingly mastered the balance of human interaction that Clint needs. He knows when to pry, knows when to leave him alone. 

May teaches him to meditate, surprised that he has the patience for it. They'll meditate for hours, May sitting on the ground and Clint usually perched in a tree where he's got a good sight line. Coulson applauds them for it, never participating ("I take it as a compliment that you think I'm patient enough to sit and do nothing for hours, but it's not really my style.") but instead disrupting to let them know whenever he's finished cooking.

Dinner at Coulson's, it turns out, was not a one time thing, but Clint prays that nearly contracting food poisoning is. The three of them gather in Coulson's kitchen for dinner two nights a week. Eventually, Clint's there more than just twice in the week, spending close to all of his evenings at Coulson's table with bad Capitol TV buzzing as background noise in the kitchen while Coulson attempts to make stew that is no more than amalgamation of things in his kitchen that are close to expiring.

None of them have family to pour the hours they've been given a second chance at into, but they have each other. They do not have white knuckles but they hold on to what they have tight. 

Coulson becomes Phil, and May becomes Melinda (or, that’s what she insists on him calling her, anyways, but Clint feels like it’s all a trap and she’ll punish him for it with a dagger in his diaphragm so he never bends. It’s the gesture that counts).

♛ ♛ ♛

**_Twelve._ **

The Victory Tour begins in a little town square that is as grey and bleak as the rest of the district itself. The sun doesn't even look the same in Twelve, a hazy ball of light hung in a grey sky. They are so far removed from the influence of the Capitol that if he hadn't killed one of the kids from Twelve, he would have assumed they were just barely balancing on their own crutches of independence.

"It's their Harvest Festival," Coulson explains when they are left alone in the Justice Building, waiting for the mayor to arrive. "Falls at the same time as this, coincidentally enough."

Yeah, Clint thinks. Coincidence has _everything_ to do with it.

What else do they have to celebrate? Another two families getting to take their places on a wooden stage haphazardly erected for them alone, the only privilege they get now that their kids are dead? The official end to another Hunger Games where they have barely scraped past the bloodbath? Twelve's a bunch of coal miners, too, so what are they even harvesting? Festival is a bold choice descriptor.

There is no real celebration here, and it makes him feel bad for accepting his escort's toast at dinner.

**_Eleven._ **

He follows the cue cards written by Coulson, ever the diplomat. He has a knack for stringing the same words together in a different braid – Clint wonders if operating inter-district relations is Coulson’s talent, because he’s superb at it, and according to Coulson, usually the escorts write the eulogies.

Clint knows his escort is about as sensitive as an angry bull fumbling through a china shop, so perhaps it’s a good thing he’s got Coulson. Fuck only knows he wouldn’t know the first thing to say if he was left to his own devices.

It’s another stage in another square in front of another crowd that looks at him blankly because they’re still mourning leagues of their own while expected to rejoice in his triumph. Another dinner where the officials shower him in gifts and talk circles around him – they offer him fresh fruit from the orchards (none of which are in season, but it’s Panem and if it’s not genetically engineered then he’s the president) and the mayor’s young daughter who’s not even school-aged yet presents him with a necklace she’s made herself, apple blossoms all vined together. He accepts it with a smile, letting her wreath him with it.

Then he remembers what world they live in, and it creates a rift in the settlement all the whiskey’s got to sit on. He throws up as the Peacekeepers are poking them in the back to board the train just at the idea of seeing the girl on a chariot in a few years’ time.

**_Nine. Eight._ _Seven._**

The districts start to go by in a blur. The words he’s saying are empty and everyone listening knows it – he uses the cue cards as legs to stand on and whatever other crutches that he can find. Sometimes he gets lucky and they have strong liquor selections at the dinner portion of the celebrations, but most of the time he finds himself inverting back into whatever bare-operation, survivalist shutdown he slipped into the headspace of when he was in the arena.

After all, this is nothing more than another arena with a little less bloodshed.

The victors he meets in every district make May seem tame and Coulson entirely out of place. Most of these people won their Games by luck, so there’s not too many of the bloodthirsty variety – Clint figures he has scores of those waiting on him in the Career districts. Instead they’re a cacophony of personality with the same rough edges and dark spots. Some are true junkies, glassy eyes and little real conversation as they swirl syrup around on their plates into patterns. Others are maniacs, or laced with pitch black humor, or outright pariahs by choice. Some are okay. Most are fucked up seven ways to Sunday.

Except for Steve Rogers. He seems normal.

“You got a real talent with a bow,” he says as they shake hands. Clint can count on his fingers the number of times someone’s said that to him post-Games and not meant it in the sense of killing people. 

“Thanks,” Clint replies gruffly.

“I know we’re technically not supposed to give gifts to the other victors,” Steve says, leaning in closer conspiratorially. “Might encourage friendship among the districts.” This cracks a smile on Clint’s face as Steve continues. “But I made you something. Didn’t feel right giving it to them.”

Steve leads Clint away from the central hub of festivities, protruding a canvas out from behind a chair. He passes it off to Clint, taking a small step back to give him the space to look.

It’s a painting of the sky, lifeless and tan and only to be enriched by a ruthless sun overhead. The ground seems far below, indecipherable at the structures and buildings save for one blurry spot of red. _The big top._ This is his arena, and up in the sky is a hawk, wings spread wide as he soars. There’s a wreath on top of his head and a magnificent golden arrow pierced straight through the hawk’s back but he remains in flight, steely look in his eyes. It rips Clint’s breath away.

Right. Steve’s talent has something to do with art – drawing, he thinks, but the painting is so good that he has to question it. Unlike some of them who just make something up to appease the Capitol’s greedy hands demanding more, Steve is genuinely talented.

Clint glances up at him, Steve’s cheeks flushing into a deep pink. “It just came to me,” he mutters by way of explanation, but Clint doesn’t need to hear him put it into words to know why he did it.

He clutches to the painting, knot in his throat when he says, “Thank you.”

**_Six._ **

"Get up, Clint." Coulson's voice sounds far away, like it's coming from the end of a tunnel and Clint is trapped somewhere on the opposite side. There’s a nudge underneath his shoulder, the pressure pushing upwards to force him onto his feet. “Help me out here.”

Clint tries to tell him to go away, but instead he mutters out unintelligible gibberish.

“Come on.” His body is a dead weight but he can feel his feet dragging along the carpet of the train car. District Six had been a nightmare. This was the district where he murdered both of the tributes – he wasn’t looking forward to any of the stops on this fuck show of a Tour, but Six takes the cake for the most dreaded of them all.

Fortunately, the people running District Six believe in a fine bottle of whiskey, and who’s he to argue? 

Coulson pulls him through the compartment, banging something into the wall panel that opens the door to his bathroom. He unceremoniously dumps Clint onto the floor of the shower and turns on the water.

It seeps through his clothes, Coulson pressing a bunch of different buttons on the shower’s controls to try and shove him back from the edge of unconsciousness, snuff out the smell of alcohol that’s permeated.

“How?” he manages to mumble out, breathing in water from the shower as he tips his head back against the shower wall and doing his best to ignore the churning nausea in his stomach. The rest of his question doesn’t quite make it out of the jumbled, tangled nest of his thoughts. _How does anyone survive this? How in the fuck is this better than dying? How’d you turn out so sane when the rest of us are just barely held together by some fraying string?_

Coulson doesn’t say anything. He grabs the detachable head of the shower and blasts it down right on top of Clint’s head. 

**_Five. Four._ **

Smile. (“It’s a crowd, Clint, you’re supposed to be friendly.” “Friendly? I won a murder competition, Coulson, not Mister Panem.”)

Wave.

Pretend to be sad for the lost tributes. Pretend to be grateful for their deaths when painted in the grander scheme.

Look at the foreheads of the families of the fallen when addressing them. (He sees the entire emotional gambit from the families of the kids he took out and it will require severe inebriation to forget even for five minutes.)

Read the cards, word for word, even if the letters start to swim. 

Shake hands.

Play nice.

Receive looks of – sympathy? Sorrow? Congratulation? – from the other victors.

Act as though the crown is worth it and that this is better than being a bloodstain and a memory.

Repeat.

**_Three._ **

"Tony Stark," he greets with an extended hand at dinner. He doesn't add _nice to meet you_ because the circumstance is far from nice, but Clint takes his hand anyways in a firm shake. “Real fan of the whole Robin Hood thing you had going for you. What’s it that they call you?”

He turns to the blonde flanked to his side, one glimpse at her enough to jog his memory. “Hawkeye,” Stark snaps. “Catchy. Wish we all got nicknames as cool as that.” Clint vaguely remembers his games: he was the one who, with the kid from District Five, came up with a plan to weaponize the force fields in the arena and kill off the majority of their competition. It worked, not without paralyzing the tribute from Five (dying three days later at the hands of a mutt) and burying a piece of shrapnel into Stark’s chest – Stark managed to survive long enough thanks to some crude invention of armor. 

“They don’t call you anything?”

“The nuisance from Three, I’m sure,” the blonde interjects while Stark gets lost in the thought. Her eyes meet Clint’s, lips pressing into a thin smile that has her apologies scrawled across. “I’m Pepper.”

“Ten’s got all the nicknamed somebodies,” Stark prattles on. “Hawkeye, the Cavalry—”

“Don’t call her that.”

The bitter frostiness in his voice catches Stark off guard. Pepper elbows him in the ribs upon the realization he’s struck a nerve. Clint can think of a nickname or two for Stark, grade-A jackass sitting somewhere near the top of the list.

Before he’s whisked back to the train, Stark pulls him to the side while everyone else is still mingling for the sake of goodbyes and other formalities he gives absolutely no shits about. “Think you might need these a little more than I do.”

He grabs onto Clint’s hand tight, prying his fingers away from his palm and pouring something into them. When Clint glances down, he sees a few perfect blue circles.

Their eyes meet, Clint’s clouded in confusion and Stark’s rather explanatory. “I’d recommend saving at least one for the President’s mansion,” he suggests, placing heavy emphasis into every word.

He thinks he might have judged Stark a little too soon, and a little too harshly. Maybe he’s only a grade-C jackass.

**_Two. One._ **

The Career districts are miserable.

He discovers that the pills Tony’s given him send him somewhere out of his body. Coulson looks at him a little funny whenever the words in his speeches have slurred together or he fixates on something for way too long, but he never questions it. It's just another thing he has to survive.

**_Zero._ **

Clint is thankful for Tony’s gift once they reach the Capitol. The opiated haze makes his conversation with Snow float by in a fuzz, and he’s so out of it when he’s sent to fuck some sponsor that it might as well be another twisted dream his brain is broadcasting.

He hardly remembers any of the festivities, which is how he’d prefer it. 

♛ ♛ ♛

The Fifty-Seventh Hunger Games comes and goes, where a girl from Three wins. Clint does not mentor; he's not ready for it and he thinks Coulson needs it, that this is what keeps Coulson glued together even if it does wind up with his tribute getting killed off by the Career pack two days in.

Clint thinks to ask Coulson about the kid, so at least he doesn't have to carry their memory on his shoulders independently. 

♛ ♛ ♛

Life finds a routine. He eventually finds it in him to pick up the bow again, shooting at a target that Coulson made him for Christmas one year. The target is ironically shaped in the crude shape of a lion's head. He, Coulson, and May still have dinner regularly, their tight knit pseudo-family slowly strengthening into the other constant aside from an unfailing ability to find a bullseye. 

He plays the guitar and composes things for the Capitol. Sometimes, Snow will have him come out to the Capitol under the guise of work and then send him off to another hotel room where he's expected to fuck a former sponsor or someone who's got an exorbitant amount of money to blow and thinks he's attractive, another prize to be won by the highest bidder. When he gets back after those trips, he and May forego their meditations to make room for a night of drinking — she doesn't ever get drunk, but he does. The appointments grow sporadic as the years pass and he gets older, losing the young and novel charm that a whole new slew of victors have. 

There are no more winners from District Ten. There are several from the Career districts, a surprising turnout in the number of outlier victors. He meets them when they come through on their Victory Tours to Ten; he's no Tony Stark handing out pills, or Steve Rogers giving gut-wrenching and hauntingly beautiful paintings as presents, but he watches them as they fumble through their initiation into the elite circle with varying levels of grace. Some crack a smile on his face and grow warm in his presence, a familiar and welcome sight when they're all together in the Capitol for another season of the Hunger Games. Others he can do nothing but stare at and get lost in wondering. 

The Games go on, and so does the world with its spinning, but a part of him remains frozen in the arena forever.

♛ ♛ ♛

The year Natasha Romanoff wins is the most talked about Games since the Second Quarter Quell, and Clint knows the hapless reason behind that one: everyone in the Capitol finds her blindingly hot.

She’s from Two, a Career if he’s ever seen one. Normally, the Academy in Two doesn’t spit out their tributes until they’re eighteen, and the stats claim she’s only sixteen. At the reaping, a girl named Tatiana gets pulled out of the fishbowl. Of course, they have a volunteer in place – Two has their tributes on the train on all levels except physical by the time they turn up for the reaping – and Natasha is the one who fills the spot. Clint has two running theories: one, she beat the eighteen-year-olds to the stage due to an arrogance streak that will result in her death no matter the Games's outcome, or two, that the Academy knew exactly what they were doing when they picked her.

It very quickly becomes evident that it’s the latter of the two.

Clint’s sure they loved and adored her at the Academy. She's one of the most lethal tributes Two has offered up in years, like she was born and bred for the sole purpose of the Games. She scores a ten in training and all but charms the magenta hair dye off Caesar Flickerman during her interview. He imagines that the Capitol will be talking about her interview dress for years to come, pinning it forever in the pop culture history of the Games. It’s the flower-serpent tactic that so many of the Careers before her (and plenty who will follow) adopt as their own. Except this year, it’s not an angle. It’s the real deal.

The arena is an icy tundra, and Natasha is a bright orange flame moving through the pristine snow when the gong sounds. She’s adept with every weapon they provide in the mouth of the Cornucopia and she kills tributes as effortlessly as she breathes. The stakes of the arena are brutal, though, and the elements are just as formidable an opponent as a kid with a knife. Kids either freeze to death or risk the Careers hunting them down thanks to an open flame on the night sky. The Careers eventually give up hunting at night by the second day because it gets too cold. It’ll likely be the last year anyone ever considers anything frozen for the arena, since it results in such anticlimactic material. Not nearly enough drama and bloodshed for the Capitol’s tastes.

The Career pack dissolves a few days in, after the girl from One tries to get the jump on Natasha while they sleep and Natasha responds in kind by slashing her throat. The boy from One attempts revenge, and the boy from Two is so utterly bored by the plight that he snaps the kid’s neck with a terrifying lack of indifference. The boy from Two, James, and Natasha, split up from there.

Natasha pulls some of the most lavish sponsor gifts that Clint has ever seen. Food, water (the only drinkable water is from the lake, home to the nasty lizard mutts), blankets, extra clothing. Someone – someone who’s going to expect a big thank you in the form of a weekend-long appointment – sends her a pair of bracelets that electroshock anyone that comes close enough for her to shoot them. From there, the game is on.

She hunts down the remaining tributes that the arena doesn’t take out. The grand finale is at the feast; her, James, and the boy from Four that hadn’t joined the pack. The boy from Four gets an edge on James and knocks him into the lake where the lizards tear him apart. Natasha has no trouble making the boy from Four unrecognizable beyond all belief.

She becomes the victor of the Sixty-Third Games, and during the entire special with Caesar Flickerman, the coquettish demeanor from before remains. It's as though the past two weeks in the arena were nothing to her. Just part of the job, and she's ready to reap all the things she's sown now that it's harvesting season. She's a rose that's red only from the bloodstains: she knows it, all of Panem knows it.

Clint watches the special with Coulson and May at Coulson’s, and it crosses his mind if Natasha knows what sort of grave she’s dug herself.

She has to know. She’s a Career, after all, and she’s spent her whole life vying for the privilege and honor.

♛ ♛ ♛

Natasha wins the Games. This is expected.

Well, except from that slight moment when she’d seen James at the feast. There had been an avalanche earlier that morning to drive them all together and they’d heard a cannon. She’d quietly hoped it was James since his picture had yet to appear in the sky. One glimpse of his face, battered but very much alive, and it was a paralyzing strike of fear. They both knew Ivan’s basics, the rules of a broken alliance running loops in their brain in that very moment without either needing to verbalize. Alliances are a necessary evil in the beginning but they are temporary. Once the strings are cut, there is no tying them back together. You run into each other again, only one of you walks away.

Fortunately for her, Zander took care of James. Unfortunately for Zander, his decision cemented his fate of never having a prayer of survival.

Her former trainers at the Academy send congratulatory gifts to the new house in the Victor’s Village when she comes home. They look as though they’re special, but Natasha knows this is the standard for a Two victor, which is why she feels no remorse in using them all as kindling. The greatest gift that they could ever give is one they can’t put a stupid bow on – it’s never having to see them again, never again under their scrutinizing glares and at the mercy of their whiplash tongues or greedy hands. Ivan’s gift makes her nauseous, and she takes great joy in smashing it to gravel for the pathway outside her front door.

Two has an abundance of victors, all of whom Natasha looks at through a skeptic's lens. They're now her neighbors in an overcrowded village; she is the newest member of their exclusive club and she is every bit the outcast she knows she is. They do their best to include her, inviting her over for dinner or stopping by to see if she wants to join some of them for a walk down to the quarry – apparently word has gotten out that she is alone in her house, no family to entertain the dead hours with. She politely denies every invitation they extend: thick paper and black ink, a scrap sent through the crack in the doorframe, afterthought comments.

It isn’t just that Natasha isn’t interested in the frivolities of being a victor; it’s that the Academy did not prepare her for this. They prepare for fifty different ways you can die in a dozen possible arenas. They do not prepare anyone on how to live in the aftermath, how to do things like socialize and develop mundane routines and breathe easy. 

She only ever opens the door for Fury, and that is because he’s the only person she trusts. That, and she knows if he really wants in, he’ll find a way no matter what preventative measures she puts up.

“Your ears been on fire, lately, Romanoff?” he tells her offhandedly one morning, dropping down at the kitchen table like he owns the place. Her lack of acknowledgement serves as his invitation to continue. “The others have been talking about you.”

Her shoulders fold in a small shrug. “See, this is where other people would care,” Fury continues, an index finger spinning in gesticulation.

“Why should I?” she mutters, turning back to her sink and the unsteady drip of water over her kitchen knives.

“You’re a kid. You don’t have any family.” If this is Fury’s goal, to tell her things she already knows, then maybe next time she’ll reconsider on letting him in. Watching him scale the window would be of pretty thorough enjoyment. “This is as close to it as you’re gonna get.”

“I don’t need them.” She’s never needed a family, and that’s not about to change just because the crown’s got weight to it. She doesn’t even remember what family looks like; she’s taken care of herself for as long as she can remember. Her father was a Peacekeeper, gone before she could commit his face into her long-term memory, and her mother was on death’s doorstep when she left Natasha on Ivan’s.

Ivan was not family.

Fury is skeptical. “No?”

“No,” Natasha answers resolutely.

“You might surprise yourself, Romanoff. They’re good people.”

“They’re killers.” _We all are,_ she thinks.

“So ‘good’ is a bit warped; wouldn’t you be able to sleep easier if you knew somebody out there had your back?” When Fury looks at her, there’s something knowing in his eye. Like he knows what she went through, living in the dorms at the Academy far before the age threshold and hardly sleeping out of fear that someone would try and free up the bed space by eliminating the obvious runt of the litter. That she’s never trusted anyone until she got Fury as her mentor, and even then, she remains a cynic. That maybe, just _maybe_ , she wouldn’t want to die alone now that she’s got a second chance to live. 

She doesn’t quip back that she’s always worked better alone. 

Fury figures out fairly quickly that she responds better when given a directive without any possible leeway. He wakes her up a few mornings later – apparently, he has had a spare key made, the privilege befalling him since she’s his tribute and always will be and this grants him a rare immunity from one of her knives – and orders her to wake up. She tries to tug the covers a little higher over her neck and he rips them back, telling her she’s got half an hour to be ready to leave. He talks like he’s guiding her through an arena (and he is the jury, judge, and executioner instead of a Gamemaker), so she drags herself out of bed, pulls her hair back into a braid, and prepares for the worst.

He waits for her at the base of her stairs outdoors, shoulder resting against the stone pillar the railings begin on. The sun pours into her eyes, Natasha cupping a hand over her brow to lessen the intensity of the light as she takes the steps two at a time. Her feet brush into the gravel upon landing, leaving divots of footprints. “Where are we going?” she asks, Fury wordlessly starting off through the Village and leaving Natasha to keep up.

“Quarry,” he answers swiftly.

The quarry’s a pit where they used to mine limestone, flooded once they’d taken everything they could and it no longer served use. Natasha’s heard stories of kids who never stepped foot in the Academy, those with an abundance of free time to sneak out to the quarry and make out with their lovers, laugh and splash and bask in the water. It seemed like a fairytale in the same way the quarry kids thought of their invitations to the Academy. Never to come, just a myth to bide the time thinking on.

They pass by the weather-worn ‘trespassing’ sign on their way in, Fury offering her a hand and helping her along the rocks. Voices carry in the empty air the closer they get, until Natasha finds herself standing in line with the sparkling blue water of the quarry’s lake that stretches from one end of the pit to the other. Smaller rocks down to dust create something like a shore for a third of the lake’s edges, while significantly larger shelves of rock frame the rest. It doesn’t take much observation of the shadows and silhouettes on the rocks to realize they are populated.

Other victors.

“Brought the ice princess, did ‘ya, Nick?” She’d recognize that drawl anywhere – Lance Hunter, one of the Academy’s infamous loose cannons. Natasha recalls the malice all the trainers spoke with when they studied his Games. He was not their favorite, and the feeling was evidently mutual, but neither party could deny he was stellar under pressure. He’s perched up on one of the ledges surrounding the water, one leg dangling off the edge and the other drawn close to his chest.

“Don’t tease her, Lance,” chides the blonde who’s got her head resting in his lap. “You’ll scare her off.”

Natasha hears the rest of her sentence in the silence that follows: _and we’ve only just got our first glimpse._

“That, or wind up with a knife in your windpipe.” Maria Hill’s sitting on a blanket a few feet from them up on a shelf of rock, diligently polishing something that looks like a gun. Hill’s the other mentor for Two; usually, there’s a steady rotation throughout the victors, but there’s no argument to be made against Fury and Hill’s team. The years the two of them are mentors are the years Two wins.

The blonde – upon closer inspection, Natasha recognizes as Bobbi Morse – visibly brightens. “On second thought, Hunter, keep it up.”

“Ice princess?” Natasha mutters to Fury.

“Can’t blame us, can you?” Gamora and her sister, Nebula, stride past her, Gamora purposefully bumping into Natasha’s shoulder when she goes. Her lips unfurl into a grin that begins to poke at her buttons. “You’re a little frosty, sugar.”

“It’s—” Her brain is prepared to finish the sentence with 'training _,'_ but as she looks around at her company, she realizes she’s just the latest to walk down their path. They’ve all endured the same.

“What?” Hunter calls down. “It’s what?” A dull _thwack_ echoes out, and Hunter winces. “God _damn_ , Bob.”

“C’mon.” A cold hand curls around Natasha’s wrist, and her instinct is to jerk away – or to flip the person over her arm and press the knife she has tucked into her bra against their throat. Her green eyes are feral as they dart up and her hand retracts like she’s been burned, only to be met with a thinly smiling Nebula, her buzz cut dyed blue vibrant as the sun hits it. She doesn’t seem to take any offense to Natasha’s hostile reaction. “You’ll want a good seat.”

“For what?” Natasha asks dumbly.

“Mack and Hunter. It’s gonna be a good show.”

Nebula and Natasha join Maria on her blanket, Natasha consciously trying to take up the least amount of space as she folds her legs underneath her. Nebula sandwiches her between herself and Maria, sprawling out on the blanket stomach-down. Natasha feels wildly out of place, a puzzle piece shoved into a spot that she does not fit.

Hill – Maria – senses this, and pulls a bottle out of the small crate she has resting on a corner of the blanket to keep it from upending on them. “Loosen up, princess.”

Natasha’s eyes narrow. “What?”

Nebula snorts. “That’s rich, Hill, coming from you.” When she catches Natasha’s curious eyes on her, she shrugs. “Hill’s our ice queen.”

“I only got the nickname because my arena was a frozen fucking cave system,” Hill clarifies, pointedly jabbing the bottle at Natasha again. This time, Natasha takes it and pops off the top, letting it linger under her nose. Whatever it is, it’s strong.

For all she knows, it’s paint thinner. 

“Uh huh,” Nebula muses, unconvinced. “And she had the winter wonderland. It fits.” Natasha brings the bottle to her lips and takes a taste test; not paint thinner, but only a few steps shy.

“What’s going on?” Natasha decides to ask around tiny swallows of her drink, still surveying the whole scene before them.

“Don’t wanna get rusty,” Hill says, running the handkerchief back over the body of what is most definitely a gun. “And it’s not like our front yards service as any real challenge.”

“Most of this is all Hunter,” Nebula adds. “He’s the one who keeps it alive by routinely running his mouth.”

Hunter leaves Morse on their ledge, climbing down to the edge of the water and stripping off his shirt before wading in. Alphonso Mackenzie – Mack – follows him in, the two putting a considerable distance between them once they’re waist high in the water. “I’ll go easy on you,” Hunter tells him. Mack rolls his eyes.

They begin their dance, throwing punches to evade them, twirling through the water in search of an upperhand with kicks and blows and the occasional splash of water to the eyes as delivered by Hunter. Everyone here has gone through Academy training, so really, it comes as no surprise for it to filter memories of sparring matches to the forefront of her brain. Except here, they fight to release steam, not to prove something. Hill and Fury hardly pay attention, while the others are a bit more invested. Natasha is utterly engrossed because it gives her something else to channel in.

She’ll mutter out missed opportunities Hunter should have taken or predict Mack’s next move before it arrives, because watching others fight and taking inventory on their moves for her future benefit is a reflex. Nebula will shoot her a look if Natasha says something a little too loudly, vaulted eyebrow in curiosity. Natasha clams up and wraps her lip back around the mouth of her bottle.

“Who’s gonna win?” Nebula inquires at one point.

Natasha’s eyes don’t leave the splashing in the water. “Mack, easy.”

“Hunter’s smaller.”

“Mack pays more attention.”

Case in point: Hunter tries to weave into Mack’s blind spot to catch him off guard. Instead of simply blocking the move, Mack uses it to his advantage and strikes, grabbing Hunter and lifting him out of the water to pin him against the wall of a rock. _Yield._ Natasha finally breaks away to give Nebula a knowing look, who concedes with the slight raise of her hand and the other tipping her own drink back.

“Whatever,” Hunter huffs, miffed as Mack sets him back down into the water. “Coulda told you that Mack would have won.”

“I told you that several times on the way over here,” Bobbi yells.

“Romanoff called it and she barely knows you,” Nebula chimes in, and Natasha suddenly wishes she was the same color as the blanket in the name of camouflage. Bobbi smirks and tosses something out about the fight being the epitome of predictability.

Hunter spins slowly in the water, looking up to where they’re perched. “Yeah? You wanna be next week’s lucky contestant, princess?”

She finds her voice in the back of her throat, breezy and dismissive. “No thanks.”

“Aw, c’mon. You scared?”

“Of you?” Hunter leers up at her, his offering of a challenge, and Natasha doesn’t bite. “Not a chance.”

Nebula laughs, and this is perhaps the first time Natasha has seen Hill smile, ever.

Hunter pesters and pesters until one week, she’s finally had enough of his mouth and takes him up on the challenge to go toe to toe in the quarry lake. He’s a menace when he fights, but Natasha’s smaller, quicker in the slow-trudging water they’re submerged in. She thinks she has it in the bag when Hunter’s arms jut out and grab her tightly, dunking her underneath the water.

She comes up, spitting quarry water from her mouth and red hair plastered against the perimeter of her face and neck. Hunter just howls in laughter at the sight of her.

He’s off guard in his moment of triumph, so Natasha strikes back and happily reciprocates in shoving him under, hands laced together on top of his head. He comes popping back up a beat later, the smile still clutching to his lips.

Natasha would like to be mad, but she finds it to be a real complication in adequately showcasing that with the sound of his laughter submerging her. Instead, the corners of her mouth betray her and begin lifting as she wipes her face clean of water. Both of Hunter’s arms come shooting out of the water in a victorious pose, cry of triumph following.

“She smiles!”

♛ ♛ ♛

Victors are the closest thing the districts will ever get to royalty, so meetings between them are diplomatically choreographed exchanges. And then of course, when all the cue cards have been recited and the careful eye of cameras and audiences and handlers alike are no longer trained on them, they allow their colors to bleed from the rigid lines.

So far, the Victory Tour is dreary and grey. There is no color to find, except for the shock of Natasha’s crimson hair in every district.

_**Ten.** _

Another stop in the Stockyard – this is the nickname One and Two use when referencing the outlier districts from Six on, where labor is grittier and children are born into the corrals they fashion for the reapings. Natasha doesn’t expect much, especially since this is a _literal_ stockyard. Cattle and livestock and all of that.

Cassiopeia, who is the bane of Natasha’s existence, pens a speech for her, and she flicks through the loopy handwriting while she waits in the wings for her introduction. She never reads verbatim from the cards. Besides, she doesn’t have to say much. With her, less is more; a sultry smile, condolences intertwined with the glory of Panem, all in under five minutes so golden she remains. This is the perk that assists the appeal of her: the possibilities for its manipulation have shown no real bounds yet.

She remembers killing the girl from Ten, her face projected on a screen behind her family’s pedestal as Natasha says a few things with a clinical detachment worth envying. It's standing on this stage that she gets a hard dose of medicine behind the mask. She is the Capitol's darling, but to the districts, she is a monster.

After her speech, she’s whisked away into a car, taking them to the nearby Justice Building where they’ve cleared a room to allow her stylists space to change. “What’s tonight’s festivity?” Natasha asks Fury while her stylists flit around her like birds. “A rodeo?”

“Dinner with the mayor,” he replies blandly. Splendid. “The food here’s excellent, though.”

There’s an abrupt knock at the door, shaking the two of them from their conversation. (The only people that go unruffled by it are the birds, who are so engrossed with their work on Natasha’s hair that they wouldn’t even be taken from their work by a firebomb detonating.)

Fury starts to stand right as whoever lingers at the door foregoes patience and enters anyway. Fury’s strapped to the teeth, even more so than Natasha, and the fleeting thought enters her brain that they’re about to witness a murder.

“Ah, there you are.”

Fury visibly relaxes, and Natasha does her best to crane her neck a little more in the direction of the door to the birds’ dismay to see who their visitor is.

“Get lost, Coulson?” Fury asks.

“If a Peacekeeper asks, then yes. Their directions to the nearest bathroom were not at all clear.”

Friendships among the differing districts are generally frowned upon, but because they’re victors and they’re already at the mercy of the Capitol, they’re cut some slack in this department. Natasha’s known Fury has friends in other districts; most of Two’s victors would say the same, and still being content to sit back and absorb all of the things that are tossed around when they all hang out has enlightened Natasha with some intel that Gamora’s got an ongoing fling with one of the victors from Six.

Fury must be close with this Coulson, if he’s willing to break into the Justice Building just to say hello.

“This your girl?” he asks, in reference to Natasha who feels very much like a mannequin the way she’s trapped in place and suddenly regaled to a possession of Fury’s.

Fury says nothing, just gestures towards Natasha. Coulson turns to face her (at an angle where she’s not about to break her neck from twisting too far), treating her to the rarity that is a warm smile that reaches his eyes. “Phil Coulson,” he introduces, sticking his hand out for Natasha to shake. “Pleasure.”

“Thanks,” she says warily as she shakes his hand. If he senses any of her unease, it rolls off his back otherwise unnoticed.

“Enjoying your tour so far?”

“It’s…” She searches and scours the depths of her brain for the right word and cannot find it. Coulson’s smile only grows, knowingness reflected back in his eyes.

“Usually is.” His voice never strays from the same level of calm, and if it weren’t for his presence in the moment, she would have assumed morphling.

“Where’s May?” Fury asks, stealing the conversation away and putting it back in his court.

“She’ll be at dinner tonight. I’ll pass along that you were looking for her – she’ll be flattered.” Fury barks out a dry laugh in response.

The two of them have a year’s worth of catching up to do in a single night and start early, quickly losing Natasha. She goes back to letting the birds peck away, working what Natasha is willing to confess as being magic with pins and lip pencils. She feels the instinct prickle on the back of her neck after a moment, the honed feeling of still being watched that's kept her alive up to this point buzzing in her ears.

Natasha gets her head turned at an angle that she’s got the doorway in about half of her vision, and it’s there that she notices another person standing back as he presumably waits on Coulson. 

He is considerably younger than Coulson, grey eyes that crackle with the same warmth that left his skin looking as though it was dipped in gold. Coulson seems put together enough to have slipped through security but _he_ does not, t-shirt sleeves sitting high up on his arms – glorious arms – and worn denim covering his legs. It’s his demeanor that gives away how he made it this far. The place he’s claimed seems incomplete without him there. 

Both her eyebrows heighten in question, and he breaks out into a grin as he peels himself from the doorframe to take a few steps in her direction. “Ten everything you thought it would be?”

“You his keeper?” she asks, quiet words slicing through him.

“Phil? Nah.” He folds his arms across his chest, and Natasha finds herself wondering if he’s ever killed someone in a chokehold. It wouldn’t be a horrible way to go, neck locked in between those arms. “Other way around, usually.”

“So you’re a victor.”

One of his hands splays out across his chest, mimicking injury. “Guess we can’t all be as easily recognizable as Phil Coulson, the great teddy-bear of Panem.” She continues staring quizzically, and he relents with a sigh. “The name _Hawkeye_ ring a bell?”

The answer’s yes. His Games were considered fairly new by the time Ivan allowed her to sit in on the seminars where they picked apart arenas, tributes, looking for weaknesses and strategies and mistakes to not make. There was a lesson to be learned from every Games, he preached, all of them still tattooed underneath Natasha’s skin. His Games taught her to pull back and look at the whole picture.

“You go by Hawkeye?” is what she says instead, laced with something like disgust.

He laughs. “Only if you insist. Clint works, too.” Clint as in Clint Barton. She knows him, alright. “It’s nice to meet you, Natasha.”

“Is it? Nice?”

“It’s nicer for you than the other twenty-three.”

Touché, she supposes.

His eyes take their inventory over her, suddenly placing her on a disk under a microscope. “Something caught your eye?” she finds herself asking, because these looks are familiar – these are looks she’s been trained to respond to with a heavy bat of eyelashes and the hint of a smirk, because they’re _going_ to come her way and if she doesn’t put on the mask and pretend to entertain it, it’ll wind up with heavy consequences.

Not that she’s got anyone left for Snow to destroy that he doesn’t already have tangled in strings. (Sometimes, though, she does contemplate the idea of feigning closeness to Ivan and then royally fucking up so Snow will do her dirty work for her, but it’s too complex of a plan that robs her of the only real satisfaction of getting rid of him for good.)

"Everything does." His eyes remind her of a crowbar, the way they scratch along her surface looking for a loose board to dig underneath and start an upheaval.

And then Cassiopeia returns, ruining everything when she takes one look at Clint and Coulson and exclaims, "Intruders!"

"I see you met Barton," Fury says once their company has been swatted out of the building by Cassiopeia and her lace fan, reminded that Natasha _is_ , in fact, still in the room.

"What's the story on him?"

Fury liberally pours himself another glass of scotch from the drink cart they've been provided with to tide them over. "You studied his Games at the Academy, I'm sure." Natasha nods, which earns a stifled shriek of disapproval from one of the birds still working in her hair. "From what Coulson says, what you see's what you get."

"Every man has an ulterior motive," Natasha disagrees. 

Fury's lips pull into a smirk. "Maybe." 

Natasha thinks that the barbecue later that evening in the mayor's sprawling backyard lacks the flair and glamour for a Victory Tour, but Fury tells no lies – the food is too good to write off entirely. Entertainment is provided by none other than Clint Barton, strapped with a guitar and a voice like whiskey. She's sure if the Capitol could preserve any part of him before he turned back to dust, it'd be his hands. They're the source of his skill, whether he's stringing a bow to fire an arrow or picking out a melody along six copper strings. 

"Didn't know you were talented," she notes breezily when they get a moment to talk. Fury's like Dad at a dinner party, flocking to his adult friends (Coulson and Melinda May, who Natasha secretly wants to get an autograph on a napkin from – she is perhaps the only victor from the Stockyard she avidly admires) and leaving Natasha to the kid's table to occupy her time with the mayor and Cassiopeia. She doesn't know who she'd take the singular shot at given the chance. The mayor's drunken ogling at her is bad enough, but Cassiopeia trying to schmooze just might be worse. 

Clint lifts the guitar by the neck slightly, his other hand wrapped around a bottle. "Don't tell me they neglect to tell you Careers that once the Hunger Games are over, you gotta find a new one."

For a place that, if anyone asks, does not exist, the Academy sure has garnered itself quite the reputation. "We pick our talents the same week they upgrade us from still targets to moving ones."

"Yeah?" The lights reflecting off of the mayor's house paint curiosity across his face, a genuine twinkle of fascination in the corner of his eyes. "What's yours?"

A perfectly manicured eyebrow shifts upwards. "I could tell you," Natasha prefaces. "But I prefer live demonstrations."

He is unreadable for a moment, so she lets her fingers lightly brush along the wrist closest to her, the one that's lingering near his hip as he clutches to the guitar. The hairline fracture of Natasha's smirk deepens. 

While _this_ isn't her talent, she is awfully talented at it. 

(Seduction, her trainers drilled into her brain, is more subtle than poison and sharper than a sword. Hunger is your tool, bloodlust is your motivator, and seduction – well, it's your friend. A friend that you regret making when it kicks you in the teeth while you're down but will carry you up any ladder and make you grateful to have it in your corner.) 

His eyes go from crowbars to box-cutters in a second when he realizes what's happening, hard metal as they abandon trying to leave her intact and leave shallow cuts that sting. The rigid glare remains as he takes a small step away from her. "Don't think so, sweetheart," he shuts her down with a bitter laugh, lips caressing the mouth of his bottle. "Already played enough games for a lifetime." Rejection splashes her in the face like cold water, but she remains unflappable. Stiffening her spine and squaring back her shoulders, she finds another mask and sets up camp behind it. Even if she would like to melt away into a puddle. 

So she's read him wrong. There's a first time for everything.

♛ ♛ ♛

The ballet slippers come from One, luxury resting in her fingertips. Swathed in ice pink ribbons made of silk, Natasha slips them on and retreats to her basement where she practices in front of a dusty, cracked mirror. She picked her talent a long time ago – everyone at the Academy did, it was the extracurricular ruse that spewed smoke and serviced as a mirror to conceal what they were really doing behind the walls – and this is the first time she’s gotten to dance without strings dictating her moves (except, they still are, because they are a gift from President Snow and they came with a note attached of a date and a time and a promise that would decimate her if she were still whole). She dances until her feet bleed and walking is excruciating. 

She dances to the brink of remembrance and then she dances to forget.

♛ ♛ ♛

Clint accompanies May and Coulson to the Capitol for the Games despite not being a mentor because the boredom for the two to three weeks without them in town is a little too much stagnancy for him to bear. He’s not allowed in the Tribute Center during the training period or the command center mentors watch the Games and arrange sponsor gifts from, but he _is_ allowed to roam around the Capitol as he pleases. He’s a victor, and that opens roughly every door in town.

The Games draw more than just Capitolites; this is also the time when all the victors, especially those from outlier districts, cluster together in the same place. They’re all close thanks to that shared life experience, some closer than others – unless they’re hailing from the same district or an extenuating circumstance (like a Snow-penciled appointment) arises, the Games are the only time they ever see each other face to face. They make up for the eleven or so months of being apart in those few weeks. 

Clint gets an invitation from Tony Stark through Coulson to join him at one of their usual spots one evening. Tony’s a mentor (yet again) for Sixty-Four, and his tribute died back in the bloodbath, meaning he’s joined all the tribute-less mentors in the delegation to go and twiddle their thumbs until a victor is crowned and the train sends them all back on their merry way. 

It isn’t just the two of them there; those victors who choose to connect with others are a glorified, upgraded Career pack. They frequent the same sections on nights out, save seats for one another at bars, occasionally trade secrets in the shadows. Clint’s good friends with Tony, and Steve, and Thor from One, who will probably never stop being the Capitol’s golden boy. Tony, in recent years, has started dragging Bruce Banner from Five along, claiming that he’s doing a public service in saving a few tax dollars that keep Bruce’s lab’s electricity running whenever he gets him out of the place for the night.

They’re in the middle of yet another debate-slash-challenge on _just_ how much liquor it takes to break Thor’s steel tolerance, when Tony’s eyes land on something across the bar and perks up instantly “Hey, Barton,” he calls. “Your Barbie’s here.”

“Not,” Clint argues. He made moon eyes at Bobbi Morse _one_ _time_ during his victory year and he’s never been able to shake it.

But Tony’s not just drunk and trying to rile him up – a crowd from Two has arrived, Clint picking out Bobbi, Lance, and Mack when he glances over his shoulder. Tony sits up a little straighter, throwing one hand into the air and waving them down. “Yo! Barbie!”

“You ever gonna let that one go, Stark?” Bobbi strolls up to their table with a casual smile, stopping next to Steve’s stool.

“Personally, I think it’s unfair if I do.”

“Whatever. Just don’t scare off the virgin.”

Tony’s eyes widen. “You brought your victorling?”

Clint leans back, looking past Steve and at the rest of Two’s pack; Lance and Mack are already talking to the bar girls floating around with shot samples. The bars are dimly lit, but even then, her hair is still a flare. Dark red curls, spilling over her bare shoulders, looking a little bit out of place since she's still green to all of this.

“Romanoff,” Steve verbalizes before anyone else can say anything. “Er—sorry. Natasha.”

Natasha’s lips press into a tight smile. “Nice to see you again, Rogers.” Her green eyes sweep across the table, likely taking inventory of their newfound company. Clint doesn’t think much of it when she settles on him last.

“You know, Barb, my likability’s up by twelve percent this year,” Tony informs Bobbi, making a wide gesture with his drink. “Who better than me to welcome Red to our ranks?”

“Where’d that likability stat come from? Capitol Couture?”

“I’ll have you know I am at the _forefront_ of fashion.”

Thor and Mack have something of a bromance going on, so the pulling up of chairs starts, and that's how Clint finds himself sitting next to Natasha. It's not the worst situation he's ever been in, but with the only open seat being next to him, the person who'd shut her down the minute he picked up her game back on the Victory Tour and made it all awkward, this isn't the most ideal place. He makes the most of it, lifting his glass in her direction as acknowledgement on its way to his lips.

“So we meet again.”

“Seems like it.”

“You enjoying yourself?” he asks, because he knows Coulson would string him up by his toes if he did something like make Fury’s girl cry. Even if he’s sure Natasha would be the one making him cry.

Her head tips to the side, red hair spilling down her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

He examines her over the rim of his glass, the way she slides up in her seat and adjusts the hem of her skirt. She’s out of her element still. “They haven’t let you out of the tower yet, huh?”

Green eyes cut over to him in a sharp glare that questions the purpose of his question and marks the offense she takes towards him even asking. “You mentoring?” he continues.

“Fury and Hill are the dream team,” she responds clinically. “Who am I to be the one to break their stride?” She’s got a point, he supposes: in Two they’re all about the win, and Fury and Hill’s kids usually wind up being the winners. Natasha is one example of many. “What about you, Hawkeye?”

The way she says the nickname makes his skin crawl, but he pushes it down. “Not a chance,” he scoffs. “This is how I prefer to spend my Games.”

“Getting drunk?”

“Oh, I’m not drunk,” he corrects. “Thor? Thor’s on his way to drunk. I’m just killing my time so no one else can decide how I spend it.” His smile is thin. “Give it a few years, you’ll see.”

“If you say so.” She ignores him, in favor of looking around the room. “Do they ID?”

It’s hard not to laugh, but he remembers that she’s still a virgin. Even if she’s one of the few tributes to come through the Games that are victors long before Snow puts the crown on their head. “Your face is your ID,” he explains. “You’re a victor, they’ll give you whatever you want.”

She decides to test the theory when one of the bar girls floats past with another round for their newest additions at the table. She puts in an order for some liquor that’s got an astronomical alcohol content in it – definitely no beginner’s blindness – and the bar girl’s silver lips are like the crescent moon when she smiles just before disappearing into the thick of the crowd.

“Get used to it,” he says, leaning in closer to her so she can hear him over the noise.

“What?” she asks, green eyes glancing to the side. This time, she seems to be genuinely interested in how he's going to follow up.

His shoulders bend in a shrug. “This. Everything. It’s the life of a victor, sweetheart. You’ve earned it.”

She tries to look through him to see underneath the iceberg of his response, but there’s nothing there for her to see. He’s learned how to be opaque, and she will too, eventually. She’s well on her way there.

If she doesn't get it now, he thinks, then she will later.

The bar girl returns with Natasha’s drink, and she wastes no time in bringing it to her lips and downing as much as she can in one go. Her face twists up in disgust, but she handles it well. Much better than he had when he'd gotten his first taste of Capitol-distilled liquor.

She’ll be one of the ones they have a hard time breaking, and something about that brings about a tiny spark of reassurance to him. 

♛ ♛ ♛

They’re at Coruscate _,_ one of the Capitol’s most popular nightclubs. It’s popular among the victors especially, because they have boxes built in on the second floor that overlook the main dancefloor and establish some privacy. It’s not really Clint’s scene, but Tony's got them a box and he still doesn't know how to slap the hand that keeps pouring.

He recognizes the majority of the faces that mill around in the box, trying their hand at bartending or dancing up near the windows so they can people watch. Clint sits on the couch with Pepper Potts from Three, Lance Hunter, and Bobbi Morse, only half-listening to their conversation. Mostly, he’s preoccupied with the delightfully numbing thump of the bassline paired with the liquor already in his system.

“Mind if I sit?” a voice comes from behind him. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees Natasha Romanoff, a drink in one hand and a tiny curved dish in the other. 

She's become a familiar sight as of late. Everywhere they go, it just so happens that she's there, too. It's likely the result of Fury kicking her from the suite - or Bobbi, ever the social butterfly, trying to drag Natasha into the mix. She's still a little uncomfortable, it seems. Her posture's a little too perfect and she tends not to talk unless someone's talking to her, so her on the approach is new. 

“Uh—yeah, sure,” he stumbles over his words a bit, blindly pushing Bobbi over (much to her chagrin) to make room for Natasha.

She carefully perches down onto the lip of the cushion, back rigid. “I don’t bite, you know,” he points out, both eyebrows arching upwards.

“I…” Her voice dies in her throat as she seems to survey the situation, weigh the benefits of her comfort versus his presence before deciding comfort prevails. She slides over until she’s fully on the couch, her thigh pressing up against his own. She glances down at it before up at him, and he gives her a thin smile of reassurance.

“What’d you get?” he asks out of courtesy, the tip of his head gesturing towards her drink.

She holds the glass up, twisting it around and watching as the ice swirls. “I think it’s the Black Widow,” she says.

“Coruscate does better specialty drinks than Dionysus’s. Just sayin.’” Natasha nods, as if she’s tucking that information into a file folder within her brain for future reference. His eyes move past the glass, onto her dish. “What’s that?”

She swaps her presentation of the glass for what’s actually a tiny bowl, and perplexity colors him at the sight. “Maraschino cherries?”

“They’re good. I like them, anyways.” To prove her point, she balances the bowl on her thigh and plucks one of the cherries out by the stem. “We don’t have stuff this sweet in Two.”

“Natasha Romanoff: has a sweet tooth,” Clint pretends to document. “This’ll be great information to send to CapitolFeed.” She stops chewing for a moment, only resuming when she sees from the relaxed expression on his face that he’s kidding.

Victors are not the kind to sell each other out for a payday. (They are, however, no strangers to submitting fake stories to the trash rags the Capitol runs. It’s something like a fun pastime when they’re all bored and high, seeing who can come up with the most outlandish rumors about each other. Usually, Tony takes the cake in this.)

“You know,” she muses offhandedly, pulling another cherry out. “I’ve heard that if you can take the stems of one of these things, it means you’re a good kisser.”

Ice water flushes through his system, reminded of her same schtick back when she was in Ten – it’s like she can read his mind, because she rolls her eyes in disgust. “Mind. Gutter. _Out.”_

“How do you think we got here?” he retorts under his breath. But he gestures with the hand that isn’t wrapped around a drink for her to continue. “Well? You gonna do it?”

Natasha is the type who likes the challenge, smirking at him as she rips the cherry off with her teeth and finishes it off. She balances the cherry stem between her index finger and thumb for a moment. “Observe.”

She pops the stem in her mouth, green eyes locking onto Clint’s while she works. He watches, waiting, unsure of what the hell she’s doing until she reaches back in and retrieves the stem, displaying it between her pinched fingers in all its knotted glory. “Ta-da.”

Clint sits up a little straighter. “Gimme one,” he insists, because he and Natasha seem to be cut from the same cloth in the challenge department.

She smiles – a _real_ smile – as she hands him one by the stem. He tears off the cherry with his thumb, offering out to her. “I’m not big on sweet,” he says. She takes it from him, tossing it into her mouth as he sets off to work on replicating her nifty stem trick.

He tries, and tries, thinking of everything he can that won’t involve him sticking his fingers in his mouth and finishing the job that way. Her delight only intensifies the longer he suffers, beginning to laugh into her drink. He shoots her a pained look in response when the dissolving giggles grow louder, trying to return back to his efforts.

It’s a lost cause, though, and eventually he loses the will to keep it up and figure out her devil cherry-stem-tying tricks. “Fine, fine,” he huffs, spitting the still very straight (if not slightly bent in the middle) stem out into the palm of his hand. “I give up.”

“Oh, Barton, that’s sad,” she laughs.

“Practice makes perfect,” he tries to argue, but she’s found too much humor in this and keeps laughing. “Something tells me you’ve done this before.”

She shrugs. “What can I say? I’m a natural.”

Her smile slowly starts to fade around her straw. “I’m sorry,” she utters out quietly, so quietly that he’s almost positive he dreamed the words or that they belong to someone else’s conversation.

“For what?”

“The whole…you know,” she finishes lamely with a lackluster gesture of her hand. “Hitting on you back on the Victory Tour thing.”

In what’s rapidly beginning to shape up to Natasha fashion, she’s left him with a shortage of things to say, so he settles with, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” she adds lamely. “It was stupid.”

Clint’s not the type to lie and sugarcoat things. “It was,” he agrees. “But we’re good.”

Her green eyes are still like glass, but they’re infinitely softer than the steel walls he’s found himself met with every time he looks at her. “Yeah?”

He nods stiffly, offering her what he can of a smile. “Yeah.”

They talk while they drink – and while she eats her cherries – about mostly nothing, just about the little things in the Capitol that it takes at least two seasons of Games to pick up on and grow accustomed to. He tells her about how they’ll be back for victor’s night once the final four comes (Coruscate does this every year when the number of tributes left aligns with the Game year and on the 0 years, they just hold victor's nights every night); she tells him her horror stories from the first few nights of the Games festivities this year and he’s happy to swap. At one point, she looks out the window of the box and they fall prey to a game of making up ridiculous backstories for the strangers that linger down below.

When she reaches the bottom of her cherries, she gets up and promises that she’ll be back after getting the bartender (aka Nebula) to restock her.

It’s once he’s back alone that Bobbi nudges him with her elbow, hard. “Ow,” he winces. “Jeez, Bob.”

“She likes you,” Bobbi says in a low voice.

“Well, that happens when you’re likable.”

Bobbi shakes her head. “Something about it is different with you. It’s like you’re the only one she really likes; the fact she says more than five words to you at a time is a miracle."

Clint scoffs, lips pausing against the rim of his glass. “It’s true, dude,” Hunter chimes in. “We basically live with her and she’s still an ice queen towards us. She warmed up to you in no time.”

“Again: likable.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Bobbi sings disarmingly, patting Clint on the knee.

His mind starts rewinding the last few days, looking for glimmers of what apparently everyone's seen: how she's supposedly gravitated towards him more than any of the others. There was the day a group of them met for lunch at a restaurant near Games headquarters so Thor didn't have to spend his lunch break alone; Steve had invited Natasha out of courtesy, and she spent most of the meal quietly stealing Clint's potato wedges from across the table. There was never any questioning to it, him just slowly nudging the basket closer in her direction. He ordered her a round of her specialty drink at Dionysus's so she could try it (she'd shook her head in contempt over the lack of vodka). And, yes, when he thinks about it, every night they've gone out in their massive victor pack, somehow she finds her way over to where he is and stays in his orbit. But it's never been an issue. It's not like he minds, and it's not like there's any ulterior motive lingering underneath the surface.

So he just rolls his eyes, mutters, "Whatever," and goes back to his drink.

Natasha returns a few minutes later with a refill on her Black Widow and her cherries, sitting down next to him with a little more confidence this time. "So," he says, making a point to elevate the volume so his eavesdroppers don't have to strain. With his free hand, he points out of the window onto the dancefloor at a random person he can find. "Tell me what Blue Hair Lady's thinking."

"Easy," Natasha says, without hesitation. "She's plotting her grand escape to the bathroom so she can pull a green wig out of her purse, pretend she's someone else, and escape the loser guy she came with."

He feels another sharp nudge in his ribs courtesy of Bobbi. 

Maybe Coulson's just started to rub off on him, he reasons with himself. Worse things have happened.

♛ ♛ ♛

Clint doesn't know what to expect the following year, mostly because Natasha Romanoff pegs him as the type to be constantly evolving, never the same person as she was five minutes or twelve months ago.

But he bumps into her at a hole in the wall during the tribute parade and it's like time starts moving forward again.

♛ ♛ ♛

Natasha’s not an idiot. According to the entire world around her, she’s a lot of things: to Fury she’s stubborn and a hermit that does not know how to process anything that crosses her path, to the rest of the victors she’s an ice princess. To the Capitol she is the bright and shining star they all want to get an up-close glimpse at in the hopes her stardust will brush off on them. To the districts she’s a stone-cold killer, to Two she is another exemplary showcase of excellence and the shift upwards of the standards. She’s dangerous, she’s lethal, she’s sexy, she’s beautiful, she’s detached, she’s heaven and hell, she’s this and that and everything else; she’s everything they tack to her and everything they don’t. Some days she buys into what they sell and other days she knows herself a little bit better than the world claims to. But she’s not stupid. Naivety was quite literally beaten out of her.

Careers aren’t just bred to win the Games. Careers devote their entire lives to the Capitol’s disposal; they give and give and when they have nothing left, they will burn the ashes. She’s known long before she was even picked for Sixty-Three what’s expected of a victor, especially one from a Career district.

So she goes where Snow tells her and fucks who he wants and gets lost in the white noise. Clients know what they want from her, and she knows what they’ll want. It’s all a part of the package they presented, the product the Academy hammered and sawed and drilled away at until she was what they wanted her to become.

None of it is news, so it grows old quickly.

When she pulls back into herself after she leaves the clients, she is practically buzzing with some kind of manic energy that she has to exercise. It’s like the person who was inside her last leaves a poison under her skin that she has to sweat out in order to feel comfortable in her skin again, remind herself who she belongs to.

The four walls in Two’s suite feel too small with all its inhabitants milling around, so when she gets back to the Tribute Center, she takes the elevator down instead of up. The gym built for the tributes is surprisingly without a lock on the door, but why would there be one? Everything has been left virtually untouched, up and abandoned until the next year. The Gamemakers assume the people remaining in the Tribute Center have no use for it, too busy milking the opulence of their district’s suites if they choose to stay here instead of riding out the Games in their own apartments. Everyone else in the building assumes they have chains on the training center doors, if not a demolition crew wrecking the place. The code of honor is what chains the doors, and Natasha pushes them open with ease.

She spends hours running laps on the gauntlet, climbing the ropes to the ceiling and back, keeping sharp on weaponry, falling back on her own embedded training to create a home inside her body for herself again. No one ever shows up to whisk her back to her room. No one gives her a second glance when they see her come back to the floor drenched in sweat. It is a near perfect system she has working in her favor. It does the trick. 

She has a meeting one night with a client where he wants for her to put up a fight, and the entire car ride back to the Tribute Center she feels like she is about to fly right out of her skin. She beelines down to the gym, strings up one of the abandoned target dummies and turns it into a punching bag. She hits and punches and kicks until she’s breathless.

“Long night?” A voice echoes through the empty training center, the sound pressing deep and hard into her exposed fight or flight nerve. She whips around on the defense, her rigidity only releasing a quarter inch when she sees her sudden company isn’t a Peacekeeper or Fury or the president himself. It’s just Barton from Ten, strolling in like he owns the place.

Natasha pushes the flyaway hairs off of her forehead as she tries to find nonchalance buried somewhere underneath the top-heavy adrenaline surging through her bloodstream. She nods, forgoing words in favor of regulating her heartbeat. Her eyebrows knit together, the perfectly posed question as her sights follow him across the room to try and find an answer as to why _he’s_ down here.

She doesn’t have to verbalize to get a reply. “Needed a knife,” he explains. “These cut better than the ones they send you through the food thing, and I don’t like asking the Avoxes.”

“But that’s what they’re there for,” is the first thing that pops into her head, it leaving her mouth somewhat dumbfounded.

Barton shrugs, rummaging through one of the storage units near the throwing targets. “Who, the Avoxes?” She nods, and even though his look isn’t scrutinizing, the weight of his gaze begins to shrink her by the second. “Maybe, but I’m perfectly capable of getting my own knife.”

“By raiding.”

“Might as well, make this place worth the electricity bill they pay.” He gestures up towards her. “Clearly, you think the same.”

Her eyes trail back over to the dummy she’s strung up. He makes a point: it’s the least they can do, leaving the doors unlocked so they can use every inch of the Capitol’s gratuity in getting them by on the suffering they put them up to.

And even then, it isn’t enough, so why bother?

“You’ve just gotta know where to look to get what you need,” he continues.

She mulls that question over in her brain. What is it that she needs? She knows what it isn’t: it’s not the punching bag of a hanging dummy. She needs to see blood, red and flowing freely, to quench the burning thirst in the back of her throat. She needs control and she needs the unpredictability, she needs the contradiction grating against her bones until the poison has been sanded away and she belongs to herself again.

She needs a win. She just had to pretend to put up a fight and lose despite her muscle memory screaming at her, and she needs to release whatever uncomfortable box of submission it’s been shoved in. She needs to be set free.

Before she can stop herself, she finds the words flying out of her mouth. “Can you—”

She catches herself, quickly backpedaling in silence. Barton’s head lifts from his search in the storage cases, momentarily ceasing his movement. “Can I…” he prompts for her to pick back up.

But she doesn’t know what it is she’s asking him, since he’s still like a stranger to her. She’s never asked a fight to come to her house; she’s used to having them break down her front door. “Never mind,” she rushes out in an exhale. That feeling where she is so unsettled she could rip herself out of her skin is back.

She needs to punch her way out of this one, and he’s in her crosshairs – she likes him enough to not want him in that unfortunate position.

Barton is regrettably the persistent type. “Natasha,” he starts, but she shakes her head.

“Nothing, it’s—"

“What?” he cuts in, a little more forceful this time, likely because he can tell something’s up and he seems to refuse to let up. “What do you need? I can’t read your mind.”

Yeah, but that’s what she’s liked about him. It always seemed like he could, like she didn’t have to waste her time with excessive words because he somehow picked up whatever frequency she operated on.

Sparring, where she’s from, is not polite or permissive, so she lets years of instinct fuel her. She storms over to him and punches him square in the jaw.

He carefully touches the place where her knuckles have left a red spot, glaring back at her venomously. “What the fuck Romanoff?”

 _You wanted to know_ she thinks. The adrenaline is back in her blood, humming like a live wire. “Hit me back.” He just watches her, trying to figure out if she’s kidding or if she means it. She forces herself to take a breath, even if it is shallow and trembling. “I need…”

Barton’s quick to put the pieces together. “Is this your way of asking me to spar with you?” Natasha remains silent, the challenge still a tiny spark glimmering in her eyes. He’s aghast at her approach, blue eyes widened. “You could have just _asked.”_

“Hit me back,” she growls, every word carefully isolated. 

He doesn’t reply, just turns on his heel and starts walking towards the actual square in the gym that they’ve designated for sparring with trainers. When he notices she isn’t following, he glances behind his shoulder at her, somewhat perplexed. “Well? Are you coming?”

Right. Fighting in an area highly saturated with weaponry is likely a bad idea.

By the time she makes it to the square, he’s finished a quick few stretches to the arms. “Don’t hold back,” she utters out.

“After that shit you just pulled?” he scoffs. “No way.”

He’s a better opponent than she would have expected – it still is an embedded instinct that she’s done due diligence to dismantle, the idea that the Career victors hold some kind of superiority over the Stockyard victors just because they were Careers. Fighting something, someone, who isn’t stationary and unpredictable is grounding for her. It forces her back into her head and gives her the control over her body that she needs in order to act and react to everything he gives her.

They fight.

Natasha is always on the offensive strike even if her frustrations scream that she is defending herself, and Clint responds well. He blocks her hits, taking advantage of her blows for his own gain. She doesn’t pull her punches and hopes that he isn’t, either. At one point, he catches a kick and uses it to knock her to the ground, the two of them alligator-rolling around on the mats trying to gain an upperhand. It’s sloppier and dirtier than Natasha is used to, but it does what she needs it to.

She finally gains the upperhand, with sweat dripping down her spine and Clint trapped underneath her. He taps out against the square, Natasha releasing some of the pressure off of his chest.

She rolls off of him as he pulls himself upright, silence ringing in her ears as her heart tries to find a regular beat again. “I’m sorry,” she mutters out as she hugs her knees close to her chest. “For hitting you.”

Clint just scoffs as he breathes heavy, grinning up at the ceiling. “’S okay,” he huffs. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about it?”

“Yeah,” he continues, accentuated the haphazard wave of his hand. “Whatever got you here.”

“It’s…nothing,” she ends lamely.

“Nothing,” he repeats, obviously unbelieving.

“What, you think I’ll tell you and you’ll be able to fix it all for me?”

This time when he laughs, it is corrosive, acidic and seeping through her skin. “Is that really who you think I am, Romanoff?” Her silence serves as a response. “I don’t even give enough of a shit to fix myself. If you wanna be fixed, do it yourself.”

When she doesn’t say anything after a few minutes, his head drops. “Sorry,” he utters under his breath. “That was...”

“It was honest.” She looks over at him, green eyes meeting grey ones. It strikes her how clear they are, the way they’re slightly bluer today than they were when she bumped into him yesterday at lunch. “I’d rather you be honest than placating.”

That cracks another laugh out of him. “Again, is that really who you think I am?”

She thinks about the way he shut her down on the Victory Tour, how letting her down gently or sparing her feelings has never once seemed to streak through the skies of his brain like lightning. She doesn’t really know who he is, but she knows who he isn’t. “No,” she finally responds.

“Okay, then.”

Clint pulls himself up off of the ground once his breathing is no longer labored. He offers her a hand to help her up, a hand that she doesn’t need; she stands up all on her own, dusting her hands off on the back of her leggings.

His eyes are searching, trying to find some sign or part of her that lets him know that whatever consumed her has passed. She gives a curt, low nod, letting the escaped hairs fall down into her face. “Just been a long night,” she mutters by way of explanation.

“I get it.” Both of Clint’s hands start to rise slowly in a show of innocence and he begins to pace backwards. “Good fight, by the way.”

“You too,” she replies.

“Think you’ll need someone to hit again sometime?”

She presses her lips down into a forced smile. “One time thing,” she answers smoothly. “But if you’re _asking_ me to hand you your ass on a regular basis…”

“Just thought I’d ask.” He grabs one of the knives from their storage carts on his way out, only stopping to call back out to her when the silver doors to the elevator part. “’Night, Natasha.” 

The last thing she sees before the doors close on him is the glint of his smile.

♛ ♛ ♛

Clint has a hunch that it is definitely not a one time thing.

So the next night, he waits until the sun's gone down and the Games have signed off for the evening before he finds himself an excuse to take the elevator. He heads down to the training center with the words from last year echoing in his head: _it's like you're the only one who she actually likes._

Sure enough, there's a set of lights on, and Natasha's chopping arms off of a circle of dummies with a sword. "What?" she asks when she notices him leaning up against one of the pillars, less venom in her voice than there was the night previous.

One of his eyebrows arches. "We gonna talk, or are we gonna spar?"

She drops the sword unceremoniously and meets him in the square. 

(He wins their match, so she insists on the best out of three.) 

After that, he stops chancing it. Clint offers her a time written on the condensation of her glass at lunch and she agrees by snatching his potato wedges (he doesn't know that that's her way of agreeing to it until he shows up again that night and there she is, knuckles wrapped and ready). He does the same thing, day after day: offering her a time, watching her accept or suggest a change, meeting her in the abandoned training center. 

Some nights she's more wired than others and needs to swing at him. Other nights they'll take turns languidly throwing knives at targets, Clint showing her how to shoot the bow. One night they just stretch – she tells him how it's from the years and years of being a dancer. He wants to tell her that her fights are a dance, whereas his are just years and years of not wanting to get his ass handed to him having built up. 

They meet up close to every night, beating the living shit out of each other and taking out their frustrations, working through all the pain they have buried and locked away. She's like him; she doesn't do well with words. She expresses herself best through her body. How she fights, how she dances, how she handles a weapon. It's something that they have in common, and it quickly sets a foundation for their shorthand. The more he learns about her and the more he lets her learn about him, the less they have to explain themselves. 

It bleeds through the walls of the training center - he's milling around at a Warehouse party with Tony and Steve when he sees her milling around with another pack of the Two victors. The second their eyes link across the room, they are a pair of magnets that draw closer and closer until they're together. 

"Ah, Romanoff!" Tony exclaims joyously. "What a lovely surprise."

"Stark," she replies coolly, perching down on the edge of the booth with a drink in either hand. "Nice to see you."

His lips press into a smile. "You're such a horrible liar," he sings.

She reciprocates the saccharine gesture, so sweet it's poisonous. "And you're such a pain in the ass." 

One of the glasses in her hands extends out in front of Clint. "Whiskey, neat," she says quietly.

He looks up at her, questioning the offering and how she knew the precise nail head to hit. "You have your tells," is the only explanation she provides. "Besides, isn't this what friends do?"

His hand lingers against the glass for a moment before he takes it from her. "Is that what we are?"

They're a lot of things. They're victors, they're law-breakers (no way is them being in the training center legal by any definition of the word), they're as good as sparring partners, they're people who like to bet on who will come out victorious in fights and whether or not Natasha can split an arrow down the middle with another arrow and dictate the loser as the buyer of first round the next time they're all out in a group. But if it's a friend she wants in exchange, he's happy to take the glass off her hands. 

Natasha says nothing, emotes nothing, gives nothing, but her eyes glitter whenever the light catches them, and he knows.

It is another one of their patterns that makes the two of them a _them_ at all.

♛ ♛ ♛

"Sometimes I don't feel real," Natasha admits into the quiet of the room. It is a hollow weight she carries; it's like the Academy carved out all the things that made her human in their attempt to harden her, create the perfect killing machine to take the title of glory, and the void inside her is a sea of emotions that she's built dam after dam to suppress.

Clint smiles, sad and understanding. "Sometimes I don't, either."

"It's like all my parts are manufactured," she explains in the best way she knows how. "Nothing real. Just man-made, and now that I've served my purpose I've started to rust."

"There are days I feel like a ghost, except my body's here but the things that make me me aren't." They leave reminders, placeholders that they've been here physically - the Capitol plasters their image to the skies on buildings, commemorates their victories in a museum and arena memorials, siphons off everything they can - but there is no real attachment. Detachment is safe, of course, but emptiness fills space just as much as anything else does and all it does is tear a bigger hole. 

"Like you're floating," Natasha finishes, and Clint nods.

"Like I'm not even real."

♛ ♛ ♛

Usually, it’s Clint seeking her out. She’s got a fairly effective way of communicating that she wants to be left alone without saying anything at all – Clint’s one of the only people that knows how to find her, and she has to give it enough kudos that she just lets it fly. His presence isn’t a frowned upon thing, when she thinks about it. It’s actually kind of nice.

And the more it happens, the more he finds her and is _there_ , the harder the moments without him become. He’s so consistent that she practically expects it, so when she works up the courage to head up to Ten’s floor without an invitation and a bunch of flimsy excuses she trashes on the elevator ride up, she feels a bit blindsided when he’s not there.

“Figured he was already with you,” Coulson says when she asks, masking her surprise as best as she can.

“Oh,” is all she’s able to mutter out, Coulson taking pity on her and offering a small smile.

“I’m sure he’ll turn up. And if he doesn’t, try the air vents.”

“What?”

“Air vents,” Coulson repeats breezily. “Closest thing they have to trees here.”

No, it’s not, she wants to say, but that would mean she’s giving up the one card that feels like it belongs exclusively to them. Her lips splinter into a half smile. “Got it,” she says, turning on her heel and doubling back to the elevator.

Sure enough, he’s down in the training center, waiting for her like he’d somehow known even before she did that she’d come looking and drag him here. He’s not standing in the square like usual, though, he’s nowhere near it – it’s to the point that she briefly contemplates the thought that she doesn’t know him at all.

When she does spot him though, he’s lounging up on the climbing cargo net. Gravity should have disagreed with it a long time ago, resulting in him on the ground, but he’s found a delicate balance to the point where he’s resting in the cradle the weight of his body has formed.

After taking a long pause of trying to figure it out and ultimately failing, she asks, “What are you doing?”

He lifts his chin, it pressing back into his neck so he can get a glimpse of her. “Laying,” he replies, phrasing it in the vein of a question.

“You can lay on the ground just as easy.”

“Sightlines are okay up here,” he answers, nestling back against the ropes. “I prefer being up high.”

She sticks her foot into the first hole in the rope net, carefully climbing her way up so she doesn’t jostle the whole thing and send them tumbling to the floor. She stops once she’s level with him, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Your whole Hawkeye thing,” she finishes for him. “Seeing better from a distance.”

“Seeing everything,” he corrects.

“The whole picture,” she finds herself muttering. That gets his attention, his head shifting against the ropes so he’s facing her. “I studied your Games. At the Academy.”

“Ah, the Academy,” he nods, resting one of his arms behind his head. “The super scary Hunger Games school.”

She gives him a look, deciding to alleviate the beginning tension in her bent wrists and allowing her body to settle down into the net beside him. “It’s not that scary,” she insists.

“You go there and learn how to be the best at killing. Maybe it’s not scary, but it’s fucked up – you can’t argue that.” He’s right. She can’t. He adjusts his position on the net so he’s laying on his side, head propped up in his palm. “You studied my Games?”

Natasha nods, her turn to stare up at the ceiling as she rests both hands on her stomach. “We studied all of them. They like the newer Games a lot, though. Gives us a better idea of what the arenas will look like since the Gamemakers all have a different flair.”

"Oh, yes, a flair for murder. Real trendsetters, they are."

She tries not to roll her eyes at his comment - she knows it's ridiculous when you look at the Games in black and white, but the Academy forces them into the grey, and that's where Natasha's lived her entire life. "You don't have to like it to respect it," she counters. "We look at arenas like pieces of art. We study them, revere them even; we learn what the artist's style is."

They’re taught to fear them, too. The healthy respect for their craft cannot exist without the very real knowledge that their genius is being utilized to kill them. So at the Academy, they learn to admire the masterpiece and find the cracks. The holes in which they’ll send a dozen tributes falling down to their deaths. The glaring flaws, the canaries in the mines.

“What was Lovejoy’s?”

“His Games were exactly as the last name promised: full of love and joy.” That earns her a laugh. “His arenas were designed for maximum contact. Sure, he had his twists here and there, but those deaths weren’t what stole the show. Like the appetizer of a meal. He wanted us to kill each other and interfere as little as possible.”

“So…what, you studied the Games so you knew what to expect?”

“You can learn something from every Games,” she prattles off almost automatically. “They edit them to tell a story for the Capitol, but for us, there was always a lesson.”

“A lesson.”

Natasha lets her head fall to the side, their eyes meeting. “Yours was to pull back. Look at the whole picture instead of what was up close.”

She watches as his eyebrows furrow, so she continues. “You were up high, in the shadows. Everyone else was so worried about the lions eating them or whatever else was in front of them that they failed to look up every once in a while. Your threat isn’t always running at you with a knife.”

Clint hums, giving a brief nod. “Sounds like you were the model student, then.”

“Obviously. You don’t get picked at sixteen just because you’re pretty.”

“What do they teach ‘em about your Games? Now, I mean?”

She exhales through her teeth, resorting back to staring at the ceiling. “Don’t know,” she mutters. “That being pretty helps.”

“Did it though?” Clint asks. “Did it really help?”

It gave her a leg up in the arena. It got her extra food, water, clothing, her Widow’s Bites – it helped her survive and make it to the other side where hands were extended, waiting, wanting. 

“Not really,” she finally sighs.

Clint turns his attention back to the ceiling. “I learned something from your Games, too, you know.”

Natasha’s eyebrows furrow. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he nods in affirmation. “That we’re not always the people we become in order to survive.”

She stares at him until she’s confident she’s burning holes through his temple and into his skull, trying to look through him like he’s glass but being met with concrete. It’s a sentiment that never comes without a one-two punch, but Fury’s words have stuck with her after all this time. Clint has never had an ulterior motive. He means what he says and says it just because; she wants to know who she is when he looks at her, but that’s not a question even she’s brave enough to ask.

All has been said, it seems, so they fade into a quietness that blankets them, nothing but the hum of the electricity that keeps the lights on filling her ears.

“Are we still going to spar?” she asks when the weight of the silence starts pressing into her chest.

“In a minute,” is Clint’s answer, quiescent and forcing her back into the cool waters of the moment. “Just…be here with me for a minute.” 

“Okay,” she whispers.

They lay there in the quiet, Clint’s eyes on the ceiling and Natasha’s on Clint.

♛ ♛ ♛

Someone begins calling them the Six.

The origin of the name is unbeknownst, but one night she’s on her way out and Fury makes an offhanded comment of, “You and the Six?”

Her eyebrows fold in confusion. “Huh?”

Fury breaks it down like it’s the fundamental basics of math. “You, Barton, Stark, Thor, Banner, and Steve. The Six.”

Someone’s started calling them the Six. The six victors who have run together enough times for photographers and news outlets to turn their friendship into some sensationalized thing, even though victors cluster and group all the time. They didn’t invent mingling and finding friends. But there’s something about the whole misfit, patchwork puzzle that isn’t expected that they create that the Capitol loves, so they become the Six.

Tony cheerfully suggests they all begin referring to themselves as the Lunatic Six, because he’s a sucker for a good rhyme.

In reality, Natasha thinks the entire thing has been blown out of proportion – they don’t even like each other that much. They’re friends, but she wouldn’t go as far to say that they’d be taking bullets for each other any time soon. Banner she can’t get any kind of read on, due to the fact he’s the quietest of the bunch. Tony is the opposite, and sometimes Natasha wishes he’d just shut the hell up so she could remember what silence sounds like. He’s loquacious and too far on the right side of too much and all the things Natasha isn’t, all the things Natasha’s glad she isn’t because she can’t really stand it.

Thor’s at least cut from a similar cloth. They were both Careers – it’s fascinating, learning how One does things. “It starts as a summer camp,” he explains one day. “Pretend Hunger Games at the end of the thing, crowning a mock victor. It doesn’t get serious until you’re twelve. If you can buy yourself a bed, you’re there. Most of it’s politics, but that stops holding weight when they pick the tributes. You must have the highest score at the end of trials or...” He slides his finger over his throat, grimacing.

“Did you guys have weight classes? Skill classes?”

Thor stares at her like she’s speaking a foreign language. “It’s politics, love,” he tells her. “It’s economic classes.”

Her lips pull into a slight frown. She’s a little disappointed, to say the least. “Oh.”

Thor pats her on the shoulder reassuringly. “Not to worry; we trained our fair share. Most of us just befriended a trainer and got private lessons.”

That perks her back up, enough to ask about weapons specialties. That they have in common, and diving back into familiar waters is like Christmas.

She likes Steve. Genuinely likes him, too, which she couldn’t have foreseen coming. If Tony’s everything she can’t stand, Steve is everything she shouldn’t. He’s all morals and politeness and things that she’s programmed to be the alternate of, but he ends up surprising her.

Most of the surprise originates from some snide comment he makes under his breath after one of the Capitol groupies follows them to Coruscate and won’t leave him alone.

Natasha hears it, eyebrows shifting up in surprise. Steve does a double take when he sees she’s tuned in, sighing in resignation. “Never ends,” he sings.

“Ah, but isn’t that the fun of it?” she quips back.

His lips draw up into a thin line. “Oh yeah,” he replies sardonically. “A total blast.”

As much as she likes structure, she’s easily seduced by chaos. The unusual catches her eye, so she’s all too happy to claim the space next to him as her own. “They flock to you because you don’t openly exhibit the crazy.”

“They love crazy here,” he argues.

“Yeah, but you have a pretty face attached. You’re like…I don’t know,” she concludes unceremoniously, the smile spreading over her face. “The anomaly.”

“Anomaly?”

“Yeah. You’re actually friendly, you…you smile and it’s not kind of terrifying. I mean, sure, you killed people, but you don’t—”

“What, don’t look like it?” He rolls his eyes. “I’m just as much killer as any of you. I just don’t openly brag about it.”

“Yes, and they find that charming. Humility’s sexy.”

He snorts. “Says who, you?”

“Oh no,” she laughs, shaking her head. Steve winces.

“Ouch.”

“You’re too strait-laced to be my type. _Now_ , that lovely lady over there with the triangular hair…right up your alley. I could put in a good word for you, if you want?”

He laughs, what seems to be the real thing, and Natasha jots it down as a success.

Steve, after Clint, is the proof that there’s more than meets the eye. She was bred into perfection, but it turns out that perfect people bore her. Dismantling the notion that Steve’s an _actual_ perfect person with manners and everything makes him infinitely more likable.

It also turns out that he’s got a wicked sense of humor. She’ll poke fun at him and he gives it right back, so she does her best to try and find him a worthy enough girlfriend. It’s the least she can do, she tells him.

“You really don’t have to,” he insists in a deadpan, completely unbothered by her pandering.

“Of course I do,” she sings condescendingly.

There’s great joy in messing with Steve, she learns. (There’s also great understanding there, to the point where she’d go to bat for Steve. She’s not entirely sure if he’d do the same for her, but she knows if he ever decides she’s worth it, it’s a privilege it’ll take a hell of a lot of effort to revoke.)

And then there’s Clint.

Clint, one of the few people who hasn’t looked at her through the lens of anything other than reality. Clint, who just gets her in a way she can’t fathom and brings a certain sense of comfort whenever he’s around that she can’t fathom her own attraction to but leans into anyways. To her, there really is no Six; it’s just her and Clint and their other friends who sometimes accompany them places.

But she’d have it no other way.

♛ ♛ ♛

Clint's never seen the whole "victor rulebook" before, but apparently it's written in black and white that victors have to do their duty or some shit, providing service back into the same Games that have traumatized all of them by mentoring. It doesn't say anywhere that the mentors _have_ to be one male, one female, so Clint and Coulson step up for the Sixty-Sixth Games. 

The boy is thirteen, and the girl is eighteen. Clint meets them on the train. The boy’s still a little misty eyed from saying goodbye to his parents, so of course, Coulson takes right to him. The girl, on the other hand, is completely stoic. That's more Clint's territory.

“I’m Clint,” he introduces himself when he sits down in the chair in front of her. Crystal blue eyes pierce through him in a harsh glare – she’s going to be a tough cookie, then. “It’s Kate, right?”

“I don’t want to die,” she responds to him coolly.

It’s hard to combat his bemusement at her lack of any subtlety. He’s not one to operate off of sole impressions alone, but this one’s a fighter. “I don’t think anybody wants to.”

“You won this thing before,” she says. “Tell me how to win it, too.”

Apparently, the tributes are choosing the mentor this year.

He learns a few things about Kate Bishop over the course of the train ride. Her father works in the Justice Building, managing finances. (To Clint, this means she’s never known what it’s like to be truly hungry. The townies tend to be better off than the majority of the district.) She’s eighteen, turning nineteen in only three weeks, so this really is something like a slap in the face. She wants to win this thing, sporting the attitude of a Career already.

“Got any skills I should know about?” he asks during lunch on the morning they’re set to arrive in the Capitol, his question following a mouthful of lamb stew.

Kate has been nothing but rock solid confidence thus far; Clint picks up on the shift in her demeanor when her head casts down slightly towards her plate, occupying herself with picking at a roll and dunking it in hot chocolate. “A couple,” she mutters. Clint looks on expectantly. “I can…kind of shoot.”

“Bow and arrow?”

“Heroin.” The look she returns feels a little more within the realm of her usual. “Yeah, bow and arrow. I learned it a few years ago.”

“How many?” Clint asks, merely out of curiosity.

“Seven, I guess?” That puts her at shooting for nearly ten years now. What was it that he was doing ten years ago?

Oh, yeah. Winning the Hunger Games.

“You kind of inspired it,” she admits sheepishly, before he’s got the opportunity to figure it out for himself and chance her making an idiot out of him when he calls her on it. “It’s a good stress reliever.”

Clint doesn’t know if he’s blushing – he’s sure if he is, though, Coulson will tell him all about it later. “It is.” She dunks a piece of her roll so far into her hot chocolate that it covers the tips of her fingers. “You any good?”

Someone chips at a star and it falls, turning into the gleam in her eye. “I’d give you a run for your money.”

He learned archery in the downtime at work, because it would come in handy in taking down coyotes at a distance and pistols were (are) forbidden for citizens. She learned archery as an after-school hobby. It’s a vast ocean of contrast and speaks to the difference in how they were both brought up, but one thing’s for sure: she is a damn good shot. Clint has never been more grateful for his retractable bow's ability to slip past security, and he stays up the night of the parade dismantling anything wooden and whittling it all down into a few good arrows so they can practice together.

He passes off Coulson’s same advice – don’t put all your eggs in the archery station basket during training. Be wary of alliances. Kate isn’t him, though; she’s got a hell of a lot more personality to her and the other kids flock to her pretty easily. She tells Clint the Careers invited her to join their pack and she’s going to go through with it. Careers aren’t bad, but that’s only after they’ve won the Games. He warns her to be cautious anyways, even if he’s pretty sure it all goes in one ear and out the other.

Except for when they practice shooting in his suite. It’s probably ill-advised, keeping her up for hours beyond the set “bedtime” since these are her last few days of sleep, but she’s got thousands upon thousands of questions related to archery and he does his best to answer them all. She litters the headboard full of arrow holes upon his encouragement.

He gets to know her during that time, too: he learns that she started archery a few months after his Games because it was a fad, but she stuck with it all throughout her teenage years, finding strength in the training after she got assaulted behind the Justice Building. (He does not tell her that there is no escaping the horrors of no longer owning your body after you win.) He learns her favorite color is purple and she’s an only child, that she loves her father but his distance did more harm than good, that she’s got a girlfriend named America who works on one of the ranches that she wants to go home to.

She scores a nine in training. She dazzles during her interview with Caesar. When she can’t sleep that night, she buzzes for Clint and asks if he wants to split a cake she’s impulsively ordered. They sit at an abandoned dinner table in the dark, forks scraping along the platter as they try to make a dent in it. She tells Clint that she wants to win so she can come back to him as well. “You’re…well,” she says, brandishing her fork in the air. “You’re my friend. A _real_ friend.”

And even if it’s dangerous, he’s her friend, too.

He promises her before she boards the hovercraft that he’s going to do everything he can to get her home.

Natasha thinks he is attached, and tells him so. “What’s it matter if I am attached?” he retorts, trying not to throw up every steel-and-fire defense right off the bat. “She’s my tribute, Tasha. I wanna help her make it out. Kinda hard not to get attached to a kid you're trying to get through a game of survival."

Natasha’s face twists up in discomfort. “We’re taught not to get attached.”

“What, at the Hunger Games School of Horrors?” he mutters.

“One morning a few girls found a starving kitten roaming around outside. They named it Liho,” she recalls, going somewhere far away and the only thing tethering her to reality her voice. “They tried hiding her in the dorms from the trainers, thinking they could sneak her scraps from the kitchen. You know what happened?” She raises her head and their eyes meet. “The trainers found out. So they made the girls who found her snap her neck.”

“That’s…fucked up.”

“That was a lesson,” she corrects stiffly. “And it was that attachment only ever brings pain.”

Clint’s head tips to the side. “So, what? You think I’m stupid for getting close to her?”

“I think you’re always stupid, Barton.”

“And you say they stomped the sentimentalist out of you.”

Her lips pull into that wary smile, like she'd like to tell him that she'll be whipping out four little words sooner rather than later, but she spares him. On occasion, she's known to be nice like that.

The odds might not have been in Kate's favor when she was reaped, but the arena is. It's a desert, a climate not too far off from Ten's, which means that's one less factor she has to worry about. There are large boulder formations sprinkled across an otherwise endless expanse of sand where tributes cower behind for shelter or climb up and into for some sense of safety. There is no water, only found at the Cornucopia or from sponsors. Clint, like most of the mentors do, sends her water fairly early on in the game just to be safe.

The Careers do take Kate in their pack; both tributes from One, Two, and Four. It's a fairly large pack for Careers, but Kate is of too much use for them to off her so soon. No one else is skilled with a long-range weapon, and with water in an abundance at the Cornucopia, food is scarce. Kate kills rabbits and foxes for them to eat, occasionally able to shoot down a bird if one or two pass overhead.

Clint is invested to a point of sacrificing his own well-being when it comes to his mentor duties. He hardly ever leaves their section of the room, more or less pitching up camp there on their sofa as he watches the Games and tries to think of how he's going to time his gifts for her. He doesn't sleep much, only eating when Coulson shoves something in his mouth for him. Coulson tells him that this isn't healthy, mentoring like this, but Clint waves him off. He told Kate he was going to see her to a crown, and he fucking meant it. 

Snake mutts attack kids, where they either die of strangulation or from poisoned bites. Some kids die from dehydration. The Career pack hunts, and Kate tends to get off easy since there are some that seem to literally be going mad from the lack of blood on their hands. Someone slips and falls to their death. The arena appears vast, so the deaths seem to come slow.

Dehydration does crazy things to people, and the pack starts to feel the strain. Clint sends water to Kate as a message and hopes she gets it: _you don't need to stay with the Careers anymore. You need to get out now._

Kate and both the kids from Four are on the same page with leaving as soon as possible, and while it wants to make Clint scream that she's not going off on her own, he's at least pleased to see she's heeding his warnings. They plan to slip away from camp one night when the girl from Four, Marin, is on watch, because they know the others will not let them leave with their lives. They're looking for any excuse to snap and kill someone. 

Their plan almost works, if it weren't for the girl from One being the lightest sleeper in history and Marin double checking to make sure everyone was still asleep when they left. "Traitors!" she screams, her words projecting out into the empty night. "They're getting away!"

Kate doesn't realize why them leaving would make them traitors, but Clint does: Marin hasn't just double checked to make sure everyone was sleeping, she's killed the boy from One in his sleep. His cannon booms, and if the other remaining tributes in the arena weren't already awake from Gemma's deranged shouting, they're up now.

"Run," Kate hisses to Teddy, almost pushing him forward through the sand into a head start. 

They set their sights on a formation of enormous boulders roughly half a mile out, promising them both height and semi-seclusion from the Careers. Kate whips an arrow out of her quiver and strings it up, firing to kill Gemma. Moving targets are the hardest to hit, but Kate's good, and she sends an arrow right through Gemma's skull. 

The advancing guard's taken out, so Kate runs like her life depends on it to catch up with Teddy and make it to the boulders. She imagines Marin is going to be a carving board for the pair from Two, and her theory is confirmed when she dares to look over her shoulder even for a second.

They weave their way through the formation, zig-zagging through the rocks as they climb up and around until they have the entire thing as their cover, nestled down in a large crevice to hide in. 

"You think they'll find us here?" Teddy asks as they huddle together, not daring to bring his voice above a whisper. 

Kate's shoulders brush up by her ears as she hugs her knees close to her chest. "We'll move before sunrise. They've got a lot of ground to cover, and I imagine Marin isn't gonna get a quick and easy kind of death." (Kate, as usual, is correct: Marin's cannon doesn't go off for hours.)

Seventeen down, Clint thinks. Six more to go.

They interview Kate's girlfriend, America, back in Ten, and it doesn't even take ten seconds for Clint to realize why Kate loves her, why she wants to make it home so badly.

Teddy and Kate keep moving together, hiking out to the next nearest rock formation that rivals their own in size. They need some kind of shelter and as much distance between them and Two as possible. The next nearest one is almost triple the size of the one they'd hidden behind when they made their great escape from the Career pack. Kate suggests that they climb, see if they can find any other tributes to eliminate and give themselves the higher ground for Kate's sake.

Someone – the boy from Twelve – far above them is also climbing through the rock formation, doing their best to make an escape before what they think the remainder of the Career pack is traps and kills them. Teddy and Kate don't see it, and they don't see the boulder that is shaken loose from its spot until it falls from the sky right on top of Kate.

Just like that, it's over. 

She's pinned under the rock and Teddy can't pry it off of her, but it isn't as though that would help her. The impact has likely broken the majority of her bones, her ribcage shattered and fragments of bone spearing her heart with the rest of her vital organs slowly having the life crushed out of them. With the little bit of life remaining in her, she reaches out for Teddy. He can only barely brush his hand against the edges of her fingertips as she takes her last ragged breaths before the cannon booms a minute later. 

Clint feels like he's the one with the boulder on his chest. He can't breathe, can't breathe, has to get out of here now that she's dead and there's nothing he can send her way to save her because a goddamn fucking boulder _fell on her and crushed her alive._

He goes to hide in the abandoned training center where he knows no one will think to look for him.

No one except for Natasha, anyways.

By the time she arrives, he's sitting on top of the gauntlet, throwing sticks from one of the survival essentials stations across the room and seeing what he can make a target to hit. "Go away," he mutters hollowly. 

"Clint," she begins softly, but he doesn't break in his repetition. Natasha lifts herself up onto the gauntlet beside him, her shoulders aligned with his back. She angles herself into him, resting a hand on his shoulder from behind, and he reacts like he's been burned. 

"What?" he shouts, the yell reverberating off the walls. Her eyes widen slightly in response when he turns to glare at her, but he's too swept up in his anger that he doesn't even think to apologize for lashing out. "Come to tell me _I told you so?_ That I should've known she wouldn't make it out? Because really, Natasha, now's not the time to flaunt your superior intellect."

She looks genuinely hurt he'd suggest a thing, but Natasha is a master at displaying what she wants others to see. "I wasn't..." she trails off thickly. "I came to say I was sorry. About Kate. The Gamemakers tend to take out the kids who have a real shot of winning."

Clint throws the last stick in his hand, it bouncing off of a cart that's holding several rapiers before hitting the ground. His gaze follows it and holds; beside him, Natasha takes a deep breath. "Do you remember that story I told you about the girls at the Academy and the kitten?" He doesn't answer. "I was the one who they made snap Liho's neck."

That pulls his attention back to her, adjusting in a small turn to face her. Natasha starts to stare down at her hands to fixate elsewhere, but somewhere in her she finds the courage to look him in the eye. "She didn't deserve it. And neither did Kate."

"Katie coulda won it," he mumbles absently, the only thought coming to his mind. It's all he can think about: he'd told her she would win. That they were in it together, that he'd do everything he could and more to make it sure she got to come home.

Natasha nods. "She would have."

" _You_ don't know that," he tries to protest in the name of cynicism, because he doesn't want to hear her placate him for the sole means of his comfort. He'd rather just drive a pointy stick through his eye. 

"You believed she would. So I do, too." 

Her words hold in the balance for a moment, Natasha carefully reaching out to place her hand back on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. Clint finds himself clutching that hand until his entire body curls into it and he dissolves into sobs. Natasha cradles his head with her other hand and holds her to his chest without a single word of complaint, letting him cry through her shirt and hold onto her like she's the last good thing left in this world. 

When they get back to Ten, they hold a small funeral for Kate. No frills, no fuss. Just Clint, Coulson, Kate's dad, and America, all standing in front of a wooden box. It is not the welcome home he had envisioned for her. 

He decides he hates mentoring. It's better suited for Coulson and May, who can at least pretend to stay at arm's length.

♛ ♛ ♛

Letters are nearly impossible to send because contact between the districts is practically forbidden, but Natasha manages to sneak one out to Ten with a Peacekeeper that's getting an assignment out in Ten come January. It costs her, of course, but it's worth it.

 ** _Clint_ ,** she scratches out late one night at the kitchen table, the moonlight from the window pouring in and Natasha quietly hoping with it will come the abundance of words that she doesn't have and probably never will. Eventually, all she can think of is,

**_The Victory Tour's a bunch of bullshit anyways._ **

She gets a reply in March, and she reads it next to the fireplace.

**_Natasha,_ **

**_It's one of the few times you'll ever get this out of me, so perhaps it's worth investing in a frame: you're right. As usual._ **

The words make her skin crawl - she saves it not because of the hollow affirmation, but because it is a small piece of him she _can_ keep with her.

♛ ♛ ♛

Coruscate is packed, like it is most nights on the weekends during the Games. Magenta lights pulsate all across the club, the refraction of light hitting the crushed diamonds encased in resin that service as tables and explode into dozens of other colors each time they sweep by. Clint’s absently swirling his glass, whiskey sloshing against the sides as he watches and waits.

His tribute died a few hours ago, so there’s no feeling guilty in not being in the control room, no point in sitting there any longer than he has to. On his way out, he’d slipped Fury a scrap of paper with a time and place hastily scribbled onto it. “Give this to Nat?” Fury had given him the single nod of confirmation.

He thinks, somewhere into his second drink, that he’s never going to mentor again. Not unless Coulson or May physically cannot handle to do so anymore. Kate had been bad enough, but he doesn’t even remember this kid’s name. He’s not the mentoring type. This year just confirmed it for him.

Natasha shows up late, finding him near the Diamond Bar – there’s four bars on the main floor, and instead of just designating them by direction, they’re labeled based on the price of alcohol housed there. Diamond’s the most expensive, and Clint’s somewhat of a loner there, watching the masses upon masses swarm Black Opal like insects. “Sorry,” she mumbles by way of apology, shrugging past him to press up against the countertop and flag down a bartender. “Meeting ran over.”

As far as Clint’s known, she’s been there since lunch. The whiskey sours in the pit of his stomach at the thought – he’s only had two appointments over the course of the last two years. Natasha is not only a Career, but she’s still new and beautiful and her Games have yet to falter in their popularity. She is a hot commodity, and he’s unsettled by the idea (and probably very real reality) that she will always be one.

Her red hair is falling out of the haphazard ponytail she’s slung it back into, dusting over bruises on her neck. Suddenly, he’s not too interested in the rest of his whiskey, instead sliding it along the bar in her direction. She gives up on getting the bartender’s attention, happy to take Clint’s offering and drinks it down. “Heard your tribute died,” she grinds out around the cough she’s suppressing. “Sorry.”

“You guys watched the Games?”

“I didn’t, but he did.”

Now Clint just wants to be sick.

“Don’t,” Natasha shuts down gruffly when Clint's pointed silence turns to sandpaper against her nerves. “Don’t go there, Clint.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Part of the territory.” She finishes off what’s left in the glass, slapping it back onto the bar. “Why did you want to meet here?”

“You like Coruscate,” he replies. “No one else does a martini dirty enough.” He looks at her, watching the magenta lights swoop over her hair and send a halo of pink scattering across the top of her head. “You wanna go somewhere else?”

When she meets his sights, her eyes are grey, all color sucked out of them the second they were plunged back into the darkness. “Anywhere.”

Clint doesn’t know where they’re headed until they pass by the Tribute Center without slowing down.

Like most victors, she rents a small apartment in the Capitol – they come in handy when they can’t stay in the Tribute Center during the opening part of the Games, or they’re stuck in the Capitol for days on end for assignments and staying in hotels that absolutely have running surveillance in all of the rooms. It’s on the outskirts of the fashion district, one of the nicer high-rises that’s all indigo glass reflecting out into the city.

She doesn’t have a view from her inner hallway room on the twenty-eighth floor, which unnerves Clint and his need for decent sight lines anywhere he goes, but it makes sense. Walls without windows means no one’s looking in.

Her apartment’s fairly immaculate and furnished with the bare minimums as far as he can see, no real signs that this place belongs to someone, belongs to _Natasha._ She leaves him standing in the entrance while she traipses off to the kitchen. He takes a few apprehensive steps towards the table, watching as she slings drawers and cabinets open in search of something. He’s content to remain patient – Snow doesn’t just make them fuck sponsors and the Capitol’s wealthiest buyers to exercise his own power over them. He does it to remind them that they don't even belong to themselves, beating it into their heads that even when they win, they still lose. 

Natasha finds what she's looking for, slamming a drawer shut with her hip and crossing the room until she's standing in front of him, thrumming with anxiety as if she doesn't get it off her chest, she's going to combust. "I..." She gathers herself with a deep inhale. "I need a favor."

"Name it."

She reaches for one of his hands, prying his fingers back until his palm is exposed. A kiss of something cold and hard is placed into the presented space, and when she draws her own hand away, he sees the scissors resting there. They're kitchen shears. "Natasha..."

"They love it," she interjects before he can say anything else. "My hair. He...tonight, he..." The words die in her throat, leaving him to fill in the blanks. Everything he can think of is less than pleasant. "They all love it, and I can't..." Green eyes lift up towards his, and when they meet, he feels himself involuntarily siphoning off her exhaustion. "You ever wish you could show 'em they didn't own you?"

All the time, he thinks. She wraps her hands over his, pressing the metal blades of the scissors down into his palm until it begins to leave an imprint in his skin. "It's something," she explains. "A start."

"You sure?"

Natasha nods.

She pulls one of the chairs out from underneath the table, positioning it directly under the light and sitting down with her back facing him. A curtain of red spills over the back as she sets it free from the remains of its ponytail, wild curls fanning out. Her hair is a part of her identity here – he doesn't have to wrack his brain for reasons why she'd want it gone. He swallows, slipping his fingers into the holes of the scissors. "How short do you want it?" Her hands brush over the tops of her shoulders. 

Clint is no expert at cutting hair, but Natasha trusts him with this – it's not like she'd be able to go to her stylists or anyone else and have them do it, since they're not allowed to do any cosmetic alterations without permission from above – so he does his best not to fuck it up. Red curls fall off into the floor at her feet as he cuts, carefully working his way up the waterfall until the entire back of the chair's exposed and her hair stops where her shoulders begin. Several different angles of approach convinces him that he's uneven in places, so by the time he's content with his work, it's even shorter and just barely touches her shoulder blades. Long enough that she's still in the game, but short enough that it's by her rules. Natasha remains eerily still while he works, only making a move to feel it when he takes a retreating step back.

"Thank you," she whispers when she rises from her seat. She doesn't even take a look at it in the reflection of the clock hanging on the wall to make sure she means it. Inherent trust, he thinks, and he can't help the tiny starburst of pride he feels knowing he is one of the few she doles it out to. "I can pay you back in palinka, or a half a lemon."

They sip on palinka until they both pass out on the most comfortable couch Clint's ever sat on. 

♛ ♛ ♛

Every victor has nightmares. They don’t openly discuss the shared trauma or the contents with one another, but it’s just another thing to come with the territory. 

Being in the Capitol does not bring sleep easy, either – if anything, Natasha’s nightmares get worse (if that’s even possible) when it’s Games season. All her decisions, it seems, are set after set of double-edged swords: she stays at home during the Games and the silence haunts her, or she tucks herself into a bed lined with horrors.

At least in the Capitol, she has motivation not to scream.

Nightmares exemplify a loss in control, something that threatens to unwind Natasha by hand. She is too infatuated with the idea of control, has romanticized it to the point she needs it like air or her whole world threatens to fall out of orbit. Even in the moments when she lets go, she knows she will be able to grab it back eventually. Nightmares are beyond her reach. It leads to a lot of late nights, going days in a row without sleeping or using whatever she can get her hands on to bring about utter unconsciousness.

Games seasons brings about the worst nightmares. Her nightmares will, on occasion, feature her back in an arena, but the horrors typically are not operated by the Gamemakers. Mostly, they give Ivan and her trainers a starring role, occasionally offering the kids she killed a walk-on spot. They tear her apart in every way they know how, put her back together and then do it all over again.

She wakes up, red hair clinging to the back of her neck and sheets vined around her legs to hold her captive. Her hands tremble, her throat burns, and her heart is still coming down from a race.

No one comes to check on her. (Everyone’s asleep and likely trapped in their own hellscape.)

The thought of going back to sleep is futile. Her brain is too wired, too far gone into fight and flight to reel back and let sleep fall back over. So quietly, she tiptoes out of her bedroom and down the hall into the great room. All of the lights are off, nearly erasing all of the luxury that adorns their suite and turns it into another room with furniture and shadows and silence.

Natasha ambles into the kitchen, pulling her sweater tighter across her chest while she fixes a cup of tea by the light of the refrigerator, the recipe a specific promise of sleep that Natasha adds generous helping of honey to – they have the real stuff here, and it does not compare to the artificial sweeteners she has to use at home. She presses her lower back into the counter while she drinks, standing in the dark and acquaintance herself with the other shadows that surround her. The tea at least calms her down fully, but sleep still feels like a joke.

She doesn’t want to be alone, either. Loneliness leaves the door open for the demons to play.

A tiny spark of an idea, albeit horrible, appears, but she goes with it and armors up for the sharpest knife of rejection. Natasha shuffles into the elevator, hitting the button on the ‘10’ – the steady push into the sky is soothing.

Clint’s floor is just as dark as her own, no signs of life anywhere to be found. She doesn’t know the exact layout or rooming assignments, but flying by the seat of her pajama pants isn’t a new concept. She carefully walks through the halls of their suite, glancing at the doors and trying to determine which one belongs to Clint – and which ones belong to people who will likely tell her to get lost. 

Clint would want the room with the best sightlines. Although every room, especially at their altitude, has a great view, he’ll want one with the most of the city. City Circle. The goddamn president’s mansion, to see if he can spot Snow on his lawn with binoculars waving back. She pads down the carpeted hall to the very end, raising her fist in a moment of hesitation before pressing it to the door and carefully knocking.

She jerks back when she hears footsteps. The door opens just a sliver, the only thing she can even make out is what might be his eye. There’s a moment of pause, before the door rips open even wider and reveals a rather rumpled looking Clint.

“Natasha?” he slurs out blearily. “What’re you—"

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, suddenly feeling an overwhelming surge of guilt for waking him. “I…I just…”

“Come in,” he says, but in his tired haze it is a slurred, hardly intelligible phrase _._ She does as he requests, brushing by him on her way into the room. “Whassa matter?” His voice is low, gravelly from the sleep and his attempt to stay quiet.

Lying to Clint is easier said than done, so she opts for the truth. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He studies her for a moment, and what he’s trying to decipher is entirely unknown to her. Whatever it is, he seems to figure out quickly enough, because he tips his head in the direction of his bed. 

They exchange nothing else in the currency of words. Natasha follows him, splitting off to the opposite side of his bed and waiting until he’s rolled back down onto the mattress before she carefully climbs in, like it’s a landmine and one wrong movement will send them sky high.

It’s the same mattress as in her room eight floors below, but the difference is immediate. She lets the sheet and blanket fall back over her, curling up into a ball as she inches towards Clint’s warmth. "I have 'em too," he admits. "The nightmares."

Concealed by the darkness, she feels a kind of bravery that even she doesn't know how to harness full time. "They're worse here."

"In the Capitol?"

"Yeah." She tries to get adjusted, one hand slipping underneath the pillow as she stares at him in the darkness. “You sure this is okay?” she whispers, voice soft enough that it doesn’t even come close to piercing a silence.

Clint smiles sleepily. “’Course. Long as it’s okay with you.”

She nods, accentuated by the ruffling of the pillow underneath her head. He draws in a breath and exhales deeply, one of his arms stretching out around her until his hand's balanced on top of her side. It's a closeness that she's only ever experienced for survival's sake, but there is no intimacy in survival. There is intimacy in seeking refuge, and if she weren't already feeling the exhaustion of her nightmares and the beginning effects of her sleeping tea, it would alarm her the way she seeks Clint every time.

“’Night, Tasha,” he mumbles.

Natasha closes her eyes and lets everything else fall away in favor of memorizing the steady heartbeat underneath her cheek.

She comes to several hours later in an unfamiliar setting. Slowly she stretches out her bones, heavy blinks as clarity comes back to her in a sludge. The room is not hers.

The room is Clint’s.

She can hear the shower running from the other room, so she meticulously folds the sheets back to free herself and slides out of the bed. Hands pull at her sweater, tugging it back across her chest as she contemplates breaking into the bathroom to tell Clint goodbye or to leave like she’d never been there in the first place. Old habits die hard. 

She slips out of his room without a word, keeping her head cast down as she moves down the hall with the elevator in her sights. Sunlight pouring in through the main rooms breathes everything back to life in the way that she knows it best but she doesn’t stop to admire it, just keeps moving so she can get back down to Two. 

“Good morning.” The voice freezes her right on the spot. Natasha nearly breaks her neck as it snaps towards the direction of the address.

It’s just Phil Coulson, sitting alone at the long dining table with a breakfast feast spread out before him with the same cheerful smile she never sees him without.

“Hi,” Natasha says awkwardly, knowing exactly how this must look to Coulson. She’s sure if she tried, she could predict his and Fury’s future conversation about this word for word. The heat is dialed up in the apples of her cheeks until a steadily burning fire is underway, flushing her skin red.

But if Coulson’s processing this news like anything other than the mellowed-out victor she knows him to be, he certainly doesn’t wear it on his face. “Breakfast?”

“I, um…” She sees the way Coulson watches her, making his own predictions behind the only set of eyes that have seen the horrors of an arena and yet still are accentuated by smile lines. “Sure,” she finally mumbles out, grabbing the closest chair and pulling it out. “Thanks, Coulson.”

“It’s Phil,” he insists. “Tea or coffee?”

“Tea,” she answers.

Coulson, she thinks, is the calm in any storm, and when Clint emerges from his room and takes the seat opposite hers at the table (with an expression that voices his surprise that she’s stayed this long and is continuing to do so), she thinks that he’s the anchor.

♛ ♛ ♛

"Get up."

Natasha's standing over his bed, all frowns and fiery red hair glaring down at him. "Huh?" he slurs out, pulling the blanket a little higher over his head. She's also seemingly found a light switch, the room infinitely brighter than he remembers it being when he nodded off.

"Get up,” she repeats stiffly. Clint groans into the pillow, trying to shrink into the mountain of blankets where she can’t find him and will therefore leave him alone.

It doesn’t come, though. Instead, her hands grip onto the blankets and yank them away from him, his body sliding with the movement. “Jesus, Natasha!” he shouts, muffled by the mattress he’s still face-down in.

“Get up,” is all she says. “We’re going.”

“Going? Where the fuck is there to go?”

“Just get your ass up. If I have to come back in here, it’ll be with a taser.”

While the standard of comfort Capitol mattresses has an entirely new bar set for comfort as a whole, Clint knows that she’s not kidding. So he begrudgingly rolls out of bed the rest of the way, letting the sheets and blankets drop to the floor as he trudges his way to the bathroom.

Once he's pulled himself together and the Capitol showers revive him from whatever state of near-death he's returned from, he makes his way into the living room. Natasha's sitting on the couch like she belongs there, only glancing up when she picks up movement in her peripheral vision. 

“Your bedside manner sucks,” he informs her dryly.

Her expression remains blank. “I’m wounded.” 

He finishes towel-drying his hair, throwing the towel onto the back of a chair. "What brings you knocking?"

"Couple of us are going out," she muses nonchalantly. "Figured you might want to come with."

Clint shakes out the t-shirt he's kept crumpled on his arm, bewilderment beginning to get the best of him. It's not uncommon for one of them to show up with an invitation, but it's been a rough season of clients for Natasha, and the unfolding results of the Games from the lens of a mentor have been beating his skull in with a hammer. Any opportunity they have free time is clearly best served far out of the public eye. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, seeing as how the alternative is you becoming one giant bedsore..." She trails off, knowing look coloring her irises.

He's observant, so he notices when her eye contact slips away from his own, beginning to slide down the rest of his figure. He pulls his shirt over his head, and by the time he resurfaces, green eyes are back onto his face like it never happened. “C’mon," she continues. "It’s victor night at Coruscate.”

His eyebrows lift, perplexed at the suggestion. Natasha shakes her head, and it’s a little strange to not see the waterfall of red curls go spilling down her shoulders at the motion. “You said it best – no one does a martini dirty enough. Gotta have at least one while we’re here.”

"Alright then," he says, adjusting the hem of his shirt. "Coruscate it is."

Victor’s night is packed, as expected. Coruscate is wall to wall with bodies, making a path in any one direction hard to navigate. Clint reaches behind him instinctively, fingers seeking for her hand and locking tight once they find what they’re looking for. Her hand is warm in his as he guides them through the crowd without fear of losing her, trying to find something that resembles breathing room near the Diamond Bar.

Her hand stays in his even once they’re out of the thick of it, ropes up around the bar to give the victors some space while they order. He doesn’t think much of it, but his heart seems to think differently: it’s a rush of adrenaline he hasn’t had before and is willing to soak up every last drop he can get. Stark and his girl, Steve, a handful of the victors from Two, Sharon Carter, and Thor are among the friendly faces lit up with yellow beams of light that scan across the room.

Natasha loosens her hand from his grip as she saunters off to say hi to Sharon and Thor, who are currently arm-wrestling on the bar top. Clint lets her break apart and slides in between Steve and Pepper to order a drink.

“Who’s the special tonight?” he asks.

Pepper grins. “Thor, to Tony’s disappointment.”

As if on cue, Tony yells over the music, “Being a blonde is not a sales pitch!”

Pepper pats him on the shoulder, more placating measure than reassurance.

Clint orders the Lightning Rod just to contribute to the tab of spiting Tony for the evening, taking the seat next to Steve and quickly getting swept up in a conversation – it’s not much of a surprise. Steve’s so easygoing that it’s hard _not_ to talk to him. “Hear they’re dedicating an exhibit to you in the winter,” Clint mentions.

“Ah, yeah.” Steve turns into the portrait of modesty, bashfully glancing down to the bottom of his drink.

“What’s the focus?”

“Most gruesome deaths in the Games,” he replies breezily. The shock hits Clint square in the chest before he sees the gleam in Steve’s eyes and realizes he’s joking. “I think they’re calling it Victory Tour? ‘S inspired by the districts.”

Clint grips onto Steve’s shoulder, downing half of the Lightning Rod in one swallow. “I don’t know what they’ll miss most about you when you’re gone – your hands or your abs.”

“I _can_ tell you what they’ll miss most about you: your arms.”

“Not my wit?”

“Definitely not,” Steve laughs.

Victor’s night is always an event, so Coruscate pulls out the best to draw the crowds – Caesar Flickerman’s niece, DJ Flick, has taken over to the delight of the sea of people on the floor. The bass thuds out from the speakers, vibrations running through the floor and the main attraction diverting far away from Thor’s latest hairstyle. To Clint, it’s always the Capitolites and their sybaritic tendencies, the way they indulge until they’re in the bathrooms throwing it all up to make room for more because they can never have enough.

He and Steve grow quiet in favor of their people watching. They love attention, love for people to stare: it only fuels the outlandishness of their appearances, the way they behave. To be the attention catcher in a room is to be a victor in their own right.

For Clint, it never sticks for long. His eyes wander, constantly looking for something else, and when they find Natasha out in the crowd with Sharon, he doesn’t know how to look away. Even being the plainest people in the room by a long shot, they’re the ones who stand out. Natasha is no exception, magnetizing to the point he doesn’t realize what he’s doing constitutes as staring until she catches him.

She just smiles, and he finishes off the rest of the Lightning Rod to see if it will cool the sudden fire starting underneath his skin.

It just turns out that he’s highly flammable.

The song ends and another begins; he and Steve migrate off of their stools and over to Thor’s end of the bar, but his eyes don’t stray from Natasha for too long. He finds himself glancing every few minutes (or seconds, he’s not sure – Capitol vodka packs a punch) to see if she’s still there, still dancing, red hair still exploding into golden sunlight every time a light passes over it.

He begins to lose track of the conversation happening over his head, the longer he finds his glances lasting. Sometimes it takes a second to find her in the crowd with the dwindling amount of free space on the dancefloor, but he does.

He remembers how this is technically her talent, to dance. It’s one of the few times she blooms and lets others relish in it.

The bottom of his drink is rapidly approaching and he’s waiting on the bartender to finish with Tony’s order when he glances back over his shoulder and spots what he can’t ignore, what he can read like an open book all the way from the bar.

The stiffness in her movements screams of discomfort. She’s saying something to Sharon, who looks over Natasha’s shoulder for a brief second before giving her a confirmatory nod. They try to slowly spin around so Sharon services as a barrier for Natasha, but something triggers Natasha to whip around instead. All the joy has left her face, hard lines and steel glares taking its place.

But the sea of people swallows them again, so he assures himself that Natasha and Sharon have it under control – he knows exactly what and where all Natasha’s weapons are stashed across her body and Sharon’s probably strapped to the teeth as well. They are not a pair to be messed with.

He loses track, resorts to stealing his glances when the conversation bounces away from him and he’s left to add to the liquor flowing through his veins. DJ Flick is damn good at her job, with one song ending and the next beginning so seamlessly time starts to lose its structure.

“Shit,” Tony swears under his breath at one point, eyes widening. “Incoming.”

A small pocket off the mass has broken off with their destination set as the bar, and it’s evident why. Near the center of the pack is Natasha and Sharon, fleeing back to the safety of the Diamond Bar. With it being victor night, IDs and balances are scanned at the ropes to make sure that everyone has the status necessary to bump elbows with the victors. Natasha and Sharon skirt past with ease, and several of their Capitol followers get admitted as well.

Victors are magnets. It never comes as a surprise. However, the people Natasha and Sharon have attracted seem to cling much harder than the general fan or groupie. They fall over themselves trying to put their next drinks on their tabs, doing their best to be the worthy ones and win over their affections.

But they don’t have to win it, not really, because this is the Capitol and they’re _their_ victors and they can take whatever they please. Clint notices this when Thor calls down the bar, joking with the girls at the expense of their little fan club. “Their favorite is the Lightning Rod!”

Natasha rolls her eyes and Sharon flips her middle finger up.

A few of the more desperate Capitolites who got through the ropes by the skin of their teeth and are too naïve to have danced this dance before believe him, trying to get the bartender’s attention to put Thor’s advice to work. But there are others who have played this game, the ones who are content to hang back and wait because they know they’ll get what they want – they’re the ones who catch Clint’s eye.

He watches how close they get.

How their hands have no real boundaries, brushing over Natasha’s shoulder in the most terrifying sort of admiration – as if they can’t believe she’s real – or enclosing in her personal space. They do it to her and they do it to Sharon, and judging by Natasha’s locked jaw that he could spot from a mile out, this is beyond a coincidence or even the testing of the waters. This is what they’d left the main floor to get away from.

So slowly, casually, Clint drifts down the bar, getting closer and closer to where they are. He watches as their hands dart out like fish, quick and slippery as they push their limits. He feels like he’s encroaching upon an impending explosion courtesy of Natasha especially.

Finally, someone’s hand brushes over Natasha’s ass and it doesn't take a genius to conclude she's reached her limit, sees the way her hand moves to grab the knife strapped under her shirt right against her hipbone because they have to put up with a lot of shit but she’s off the clock and she should at least be exempt from it for now and doesn’t care what the ramifications are.

Clint beats her to the punch – he’s gotten close enough now that he can grab the guy who’s pushed his luck much too far. His hand is a vise around the guy’s arm, jerking it backwards so forcefully that the guy stumbles back a step. Natasha’s hand comes off of her hip, whirling around with the butterfly knife’s blade extended. It comes to rest right against his neck; the two of them have him in quite the compromising position. If he tries to shake Clint, he gets Natasha, and if he tries to evade Natasha, he has to deal with Clint.

“I thought I told you if you touched me again, you’d lose that hand,” Natasha jogs his memory.

“I—I don’t—”

“Really, your only saving grace here is Barton, because he’s holding that hand and I don’t think he’d forgive me for giving blood all over his favorite shirt.”

“Oh no, I would,” Clint chimes in.

“So,” Natasha continues, her lips curling into a predatory smile as she moves the knife a little closer. “You’re going to leave with both your hands. You try and touch me or any one of my friends again? You’ll wish I had cut off your hand instead.”

“You heard her,” Clint utters releasing his arm. “Get lost.”

The guy retreats with his tail between his legs, being absorbed by the crowd on the dancefloor and getting lost. Natasha flicks the knife back down as she reaches back for the drink she’d left on the bar top.

“You okay?” Clint asks, voice lowering to try and keep their conversation between them, even though he’s sure they’ve drawn quite a few eyes. It is a twisted, fucked up mindset: the Capitolites want them in whatever way they can pay for them, but pushing one to the brink like that is abhorrent to think about. They don’t see their paid sessions as arranged by Snow as hurting them, but when Natasha Romanoff pulls a knife on a guy for bothering her, it’s safe to say he’ll have a stain on his reputation come the morning.

It is warped but they’re _their_ victors. Capitolites take and believe the fake smiles, and they take their sides even when everything they’ve done since they were old enough to be in the Games has shown where their true allegiances lie.

“I’m fine,” Natasha mumbles around the lip of her glass. “Thanks for the backup.”

“No problem,” Clint replies stiffly.

(He doesn't tell her that he'd be there for her in a heartbeat, because that's what they do: they back each other up. Part of it is because he can't believe she wouldn't know that by now. The other part is something that is a definite step off the shelf of the ocean they're currently at with an unknown depth that'll probably just lead to them drowning.)

His frustration with how they can't even belong to themselves and the way she’s shutting down every emotion pulsating through her brain so she doesn’t _really_ snap are a sharp enough combination to cut the ties of their conversation. Clint retreats back to the end of the bar that isn't oversaturated with people, flagging down the bartender and ordering something infinitely stronger than the Lightning Rod. He needs something to deep cleanse his brain or zap out the memory so he's not tempted to do something he regrets. 

"So," Steve prefaces when he sits back down. His voice is spread thin, lowered so only they can hear. "You and Romanoff."

"What about it?" is Clint's gruff reply.

"You know," Steve accuses.

"Nah," Clint's quick to shut down, because he _does_ know. "It's nothing."

He looks up, just to see Steve watching him with something knowing in his eyes, a certain sadness painting over the blue. "It's nothing," Clint repeats forcefully. The bartender passes him the drink and Clint wastes no time in bringing it to his lips, letting it leave a trail of fire down his throat before jerking the glass down onto the bar-top in a hard collision.

Steve turns back to his bottle, head "Okay." Steve lets it go.

Clint tries, but for whatever reason, he can't.

♛ ♛ ♛

**_Yelena Belova._ **

That’s the name attached to a file Fury unceremoniously dumps in front of Natasha six days before the reaping. “I got you the girl,” he tells her as she starts thumbing through the training scores and analytics on Yelena that the Academy’s offered up. “Apparently she’s their best score since you.”

Short-range and up close is her forte; there are no weapon affinities listed, which means she’s comfortable with anything her hand touches. Natasha flips through the records, the statistics, the logs – everything the Academy has on her glows. She’s a star pupil by all accounts, leaving little to no question why they’ve selected her as the tribute for this year’s Games.

She’s also only fifteen. The youngest tribute the Academy’s chosen since Natasha, too.

They board the train after the reaping with the Capitol in sight, the shortest ride out of all of the districts. Yelena sits across from Natasha at the dinner table, sizing her up with something nasty and smug in the striations of her green irises. _I’m you, but better,_ they seem to sneer. There are pinpricks of annoyance that embed their way into Natasha’s skin at the intent of the gesture. People like this are dangerous, and not just because they might have good skill with a weapon.

“You thought your strategy yet?” Natasha asks in attempt to uphold her mentor duties as Yelena pushes the last bit of her baklava around her plate.

“No?” Yelena’s fork stops scraping the edges in pause, giving Natasha a quizzical look. “I don’t need a strategy.”

One of Natasha’s eyebrows shifts up in question. “Too good for it?” Next to her, Fury tenses – Natasha might be a mentor now, but she’s still his tribute, his lone eye still constantly surveilling her for the moment that he’ll need to yank her ass out of a dogfight.

“I didn’t need a strategy to win at the Academy,” Yelena replies breezily.

“This isn’t the Academy.”

Yelena delicately places her fork back down onto the table, hands folding together and balancing on the lip of the table as she leans forward. “They put me in your arena for my final,” she says, the reminder of the final simulations the Academy throws the top pool of candidates in to narrow down who stands the higher likelihood of coming home a victor. The Academy isn’t funded on a chance and a hope. They produce victors, they demand wins. “I won the feast in half the time it took you.”

“On a full stomach, a good night’s sleep, and no real threat. No real tributes or Gamemaker influence, just you frolicking around in a rerun of a fixed-outcome Games where you won because they drill the timeline into your head,” Natasha fills in the blanks frostily. Yelena hardens, and it’s Natasha’s turn to linger over her placemat. “I’m the blueprint you came from, sweetheart. They made you to be another me, which is exactly why you need a strategy. One that doesn’t involve stepping in my footprints.”

Natasha’s fist is curled a little tighter around the knife under her pillow until their train arrives in the Capitol and she doesn’t have to worry about her tribute slitting her throat in her sleep as a means of vengeance. (Yelena wouldn’t, not really, because Two’s a place where you shut your mouth and do what your mentor tells you even if it’s to jump off the train – and Natasha certainly entertains these thoughts – because victors are royalty. You are nothing until you win.)

It takes several days in the Capitol for Yelena to start holding Natasha’s words with some sense of regard. Yelena explains her plan for the private session with the Gamemakers and Natasha advises her against it if she wants to score higher than a six. “You’re lucky, you get them before they’re blackout drunk. Use it to your advantage and impress them.”

“What’d you do?” Yelena asks, and even if there is still a derisive edge to her voice, it’s the closest she’s gotten to seeking any kind of mentorship from Natasha.

That fleeting moment disappears when Yelena mutters under her breath something about a striptease as addendum. Natasha steels herself and forces her hand around the stem of her wine glass, far away from the knife that every atom in her body is thrumming to grab and toss.

“I blindfolded myself and then threw knives at one of the trainers standing in front of a target.” It had been Fury’s idea to eliminate one of her senses and show them she was still able to perform at a cut above the rest. The ten had pissed her off, but Fury’s words were to quit the simmering and be grateful she walked away with the highest score. As far as she knew, that’d be the only thing they’d remember about her up until her televised death.

Yelena blinks – training sessions usually remain private, so their details go unknown. The tiny edges of a smirk pull at Natasha’s mouth as she takes a sip of her wine. “Wouldn’t recommend doing that, unless you just _want_ to make your strategy my shadow, but it doesn’t hurt to think outside of the box.”

There is a tiny shift in their dynamic after that. Yelena seems to rise to the challenge Natasha’s presented her and scores a ten. They still don’t like each other, and there is still seemingly no trust between them, but Natasha is determined to see Yelena through the Games as a victor. Nothing less (and perhaps, nothing more).

Natasha sits with Fury in the mentor’s room, all white and pristine – like the snow had been in her arena before the bloodbath got started – as she watches on one of a dozen monitors as the tributes rise up into the arena. Natasha’s eyes scour for the blonde hair that hallmark Yelena the minute she finishes processing the arena coming into view. Beach, with the Cornucopia in the center of the shore. High cliffs surrounding, which mean caves and dozens of untold dangers inside them. Water, Natasha thinks with a mind still running like a tribute’s, will likely be hard to find with an ocean lapping around the pedestals. Too obvious.

The gong sounds and Natasha doesn’t even realize she’s holding her breath until the bloodbath is over and Fury nudges her with his elbow to make sure she’s still alive.

Yelena survives the bloodbath and claims three of the nine kills. Like clockwork, the Career pack takes its shape: both tributes from One and Two, the boy from Four and the boy from Eleven. Natasha prays that Yelena is half as smart as she is utterly lethal and trusts none of them. At face value, the tributes that present the most challenge to her are the boy from One and the boy from Eleven. They not only have brawn stacked against her, but they are not dumb. Stupidity is dangerous, but knowledge in the hands of your opponent is a knife to the throat. 

The Career pack hunts, but there is apprehension in entering the caves where they assume hiding tributes to be. It boils down to risk versus reward for any party – risk, the twists of the Gamemakers beyond your control and the possibility of death, reward, a safe haven or another tribute down. The Careers take the risk twice and are rewarded, eliminating three tributes. 

The third time is not the charm. There are nasty rat mutts the size of foxes dwelling in the shadows, flooding them out of the cave and turning the boys from Four and One into a snack. Yelena, her district partner, the boy from Eleven and the girl from One all barely make it out of the cave unscathed – they had to rappel to this one, and they more or less scramble down the rocks like insects. Yelena's been bitten by one of the rats, and no one knows if it's a poisonous bite or not. Panic blooms in Natasha's chest. If they think it's poisonous, if they think she's dead weight for a second, they'll have no issue dropping her and calling it a mercy kill. _Don't trust them,_ she wants to scream through the monitor at Yelena. _Trust_ me _._

Natasha doesn't have enough sponsor money pooled for the price of medicine, so she fucks a sponsor for the remaining amount. Yelena breathes a sigh of relief to the sky when the silver parachute falls from the sky, and Natasha gets more than two hours of sleep. 

Yelena survives – thank fuck – and the pack splinters when they try to decide what to do about hunting the remaining tributes. The boys think that they need to move now, wipe out the others while they still have food and water remaining, but Yelena and the girl from One, Chalcedony, disagree. The rats took out a third of their pack without blinking a single beady eye; they don't know what's waiting for them in the rest of the caves. It's too much of a risk, and they're better off strategizing on luring the others out of the caves than chancing their own survival. It almost comes to blows, but with there only being nine tributes left, it's best if they go their separate ways anyways. Yelena and Chalcedony get the Cornucopia by default, since they're the ones who are choosing to stay.

"Your girl's smart," Clint tells Natasha one night when she has the evening off, Fury watching over both Yelena and Cadmus in the control room. Clint's come prepared, armed with a basket of crispy potato wedges. "Reminds me of you."

Natasha shakes her head to disagree, but Clint keeps talking. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you passed her the strategy idea with the medicine."

"I just don't want her to die," she mutters, examining the uniform shape of her nails in search of an imperfection. She doesn't find one. 

Clint catches her eye and when he does, she immediately notices the weary smile, the resignation in his eyes that speaks volumes. Her stomach twists. "Is this what it was like with her?" Natasha asks softly, careful to skirt around Kate's name. "Am I attached?"

"Do you think you're attached?"

Natasha shrugs. "We breed victors. Not sentiment."

"You're not robots. You're not, the kids aren't...they're kids," he finishes lamely. "She's what, fifteen?"

"Yeah."

A wave of warmth falls over her hand when Clint rests his own on top. "You're allowed to be attached, Natasha. You're allowed to want her to win."

"I want it more," she says mostly to herself. _There will always be people who want the same things you do, Natalia_ , Ivan echoes in her head. _You have to want it more._ And she did: she wanted her bed more than the other girls in her dorm at the Academy, so she got to sleep with a pillow under her head. She wanted to be tribute more than the eighteen-year-olds who were ready to knife her after practice one day for taking their chance, so she beat them all to the stage no matter what. She wanted to win the Games more than all the other tributes, so she killed any of them that stood in her way until she was covered in blood and the hovercraft was headed her way. And she wants Yelena to come out the victor more than any of the other mentors do for their own tributes.

Yelena and Chalcedony use the boys' departure to create their plan. The caves face the tail of the Cornucopia, so they're able to hunker down inside and lure the tributes out at the thought of the Cornucopia being abandoned, all of the food and supplies seemingly untouched from overhead. The cameras are only able to pick up audio inside the Cornucopia, especially once night falls. Natasha thinks that Yelena and Chalcedony are getting close, the kind of close that's your death sentence in the Games.

Sure enough, their plan works. The girl and boy from Six play the dealings of risk versus reward to snag a bottle of water, and Yelena and Chalcedony are like sharks. They come from the depths of the Cornucopia, taking their victims by surprise when they bury their weapons into them. They don't see it coming. They're down to six tributes left (apparently, the boys found a victim in their own hunting endeavors). 

Natasha sees how hard it is for Yelena and Chalcedony to pull away. The agitation is an obnoxious hum in the back of her mind, contemplating withholding the sponsor gifts that, as prices climb, are barreling towards barely affording a loaf of bread to send her a message to break it off now before she does something stupid. 

She ends up not having to.

Chalcedony tells Yelena that killing the kids from Six has likely given them up if anyone else in the caves happens to be watching down on them. Chalcedony says they tried, and in a way, their strategy worked, but now they need a new one. Now they need to hunt. Yelena hesitates, but eventually sees her logic and agrees. They hatch a new plan; they'll sweep the Cornucopia before they leave, and then they go back to picking through the caves. The first cannon they hear, they'll split up, but that part of the plan is uneasy when they agree to it. 

They decide, instead of scaling the rocks, they'll just climb the Cornucopia to the nearest shelf and work their way up from there. So they do, and Yelena's just barely started an assessment on how they'll go about jumping from the tail of the Cornucopia onto the rocks when Chalcedony grabs both of Yelena's braids and flings her backwards. 

Natasha feels like everyone hears the catch in her throat, but no one does. It's so quiet in the mentors room now with only six of them left that they'd be able to hear a pin drop.

Chalcedony whips out a knife and tries to pin Yelena underneath her with her foot, but Yelena scrambles backward and tries to climb to her feet. Chalcedony is no longer the girl who let Yelena snuggle against her on the cold nights. Chalcedony herself is frozen in her callousness as she attempts to kill Yelena. Yelena does her best to knock Chalcedony down to her level when Chalcedony shows no mercy in kicking her back down time and time again, going for the knees and pulling her feet out from underneath her. Chalcedony yelps in protest when her body collides with the metal of the Cornucopia. Yelena barely gets back up, in attempt to make an escape for the tail of the horn and to get out of there, and in her mind, Natasha is screaming for Yelena to forget whatever niceties she's suddenly learned and to _kill her._

Chalcedony gets Yelena back on the ground and rolls them over, Chalcedony straddling Yelena and bracketing her hips with both her knees. 

"You..." Yelena coughs, blood spattering on Chalcedony's face. "Played me."

"It's the Games, sweetheart," Chalcedony points out cavalierly. "And I'm playing."

Natasha is forcing every atom in her to stay sitting down and to not throw Fury's cup of tea at the monitor when there's a rumble from the ocean.

The Gamemakers, the often-forgotten element, have decided things are too boring for them, so they're sending in a flood.

Chalcedony's too preoccupied by the barreling ocean water, and finally Yelena's brain comes back to her in that moment, pushing Chalcedony off her and turning the tables. Yelena swipes the knife and goes for the throat. Chalcedony blocks it with her forearm as best she can, trying to push Yelena back. Yelena's eyes are alight with anger at the betrayal, so she stops trying to go for the swift and messy kill, taking advantage of the lack of defense and driving the knife down into her chest. Chalcedony lets out an unnatural sort of groan, eyes threatening to pop out of her sockets.

"You were saying?" Yelena coos, ripping the knife back out and slitting Chalcedony's throat.

She's well on her way out but Natasha knows what things like betrayal and anger do to people in survival mode. Yelena disregards the barreling waves that are slamming into the Cornucopia to get in a few more stabs to the chest – mutters something about _shut up, stupid bitch_ – and carving the word 'RAT' into her forehead. She strips Chalcedony of her pack before she kicks her body over the edge of the Cornucopia.

Yelena gets up to the rocks before the water begins to significantly rise and the Cornucopia is no more. A shark mutt finds its way into one of the lower level caves that have been flooded and eats a tribute. Cadmus turns on the boy from Eleven and kills him. Another mutt of some kind – Natasha can't tell, but whatever it is, it's heinous – tears Cadmus limb from limb. 

The Gamemakers don't have time to rig a worthy finale. Yelena finds the remaining tribute and kills them. 

Natasha's immediately transferred by some Peacekeepers into a car, headed straight for the medical facility they're currently flying Yelena to. It's a long, silent ride, where the blood is pounding in Natasha's ears and her mind is spinning. Yelena won. Her girl is alive. Natasha wanted it more.

Yelena's asleep by the time the staff clears Natasha and admits her into the room, knocked out with a sedative to allow her the chance to sleep. Even though she controlled the food and water supply, her skin is pallid and tight across her bones, lips chapped and hair matted. "We'll be working her back to Beauty Base Zero once her levels look normal," someone, likely a doctor, tells her, and Natasha thinks she nods in response. It's not like she can give or revoke consent to anything that they're going to do to her. They tell her all this as a formality. 

Natasha wishes she was Fury, all short-sentences and intimidation to sway things in her favor. "What's Base Zero?"

"Scar erasure, patching up any medical injuries she might have sustained in the arena, haircut, and a cosmetic procedure for a face carving. Very popular right now after what she did in the Games," the doctor says with a tiny nod. "Very in."

"Oh?" Natasha arches an eyebrow, face disguising all of the disgust building in her chest. "Is that what's set in stone?"

The doctor begins referring back to his tablet in something like a fluster, something that Natasha can use and manipulate. "Yes, Miss Romanoff, that's what we have here."

Natasha takes a step closer, hand reaching out and settling over the crook of the doctor's elbow. "Look, I know my girl," she begins, voice half an octave lower and a carefully implanted wavering. "And I think you do too – we both watched the Games. We both saw what she did with that girl from One when she got double-crossed. I'm the one who has to tell her what happened when she wakes up. Do you really want for her to snap, do what she did to Chalcedony? To carve me up, too?" 

Browbeating has never been her game. Being the honey pot has, and there is no greater motivator than the face of Natasha Romanoff at potential risk.

The face carving procedure mysteriously disappears off the agenda. Natasha collapses onto the edge Yelena's bed in relief, and stays there.

When Yelena wakes up, Natasha's is the first face she sees. She curls into a comma, sliding up the bed so her head is in Natasha's lap where Natasha can stroke her hair and give her the comfort she is desperate for. "You did it," Natasha reassures, her voice like a balm washing over her tribute's skin. "You did it."

Yelena shakes her head in denial. Natasha is a little more forceful this time, tipping her chin back so Yelena's physically forced to make eye contact with her mentor. "You won, Yelena."

"I lost," Yelena mutters in refutation, a broken record that doesn't even know it keeps looping on the same phrase. "I lost."

"What'd you lose?" Natasha whispers. "We can get it back. You're a Victor now, they'll give you anything you want."

"Me." She draws in a deep, shaky breath. "Knew better, I _knew_ better, but..." She trails off without any real direction to find. Knew better than to what, team up with Chalcedony? Believe her? 

Natasha might not know the picture on the box but she thinks she has the puzzle solved. Natasha was the prototype, and Yelena was the upgrade, fashioned from her mistakes, yet Yelena did the one thing Natasha never did inside the arena: trusted someone. She failed at her mission. She won, and she lost.

She clutches to Natasha like a lifeline, and Natasha doesn't dream of letting go.

♛ ♛ ♛

The months between the Games and the Victory Tour, Natasha learns a lot about Yelena.

She learns that Yelena is willing to pay extra for coffee instead of taking watered down tea like the rest of them. She learns that Yelena keeps her knives strapped to her chest underneath her arms and has nicked herself a few times because of it. She learns that Yelena can sleep anywhere, even in the most uncomfortable positions and places. She learns that bodies of water larger than a stream remind Yelena too much of her arena, too much of Chalcedony, and she’d rather cut off her left hand than get in the quarry lake. She learns that Yelena’s favorite color is blue and that she is an insomniac and that Yelena gave herself a tattoo while she was living in the dorms that the Capitol techs erased when they knocked her back to Beauty Base Zero.

She learns that Yelena has no family other than her. They’re trivial things to anyone else, but to Natasha, they’re things she learns about her family. Because they are, technically – she saved Yelena’s life, and that ties them together in a way that the world cannot break.

Yelena keeps her distance for the most part and Natasha is beyond content to give that to her, only pushing when Yelena’s standing on the brink and needs the nudge. Eventually, though, Yelena’s spending nights on Natasha’s couch and Natasha stays up, sitting in the armchair adjacent to the couch and feeling relieved that at least one of them is sleeping without paralyzing nightmares.

Natasha also learns that Yelena loves, more than anything, weaseling her way into Natasha’s business.

The Victory Tour starts with a lackluster bang in District Twelve, of course, with Natasha’s attention split on making sure Yelena reads the cards and how many days left until they’re in District Ten. When the train leaves the orchards and keeps heading out to the west, foliage turning to desert, Natasha feels her spirits perk up.

Yelena gives her speech under the same arch that Natasha did, and then they are whisked back into the Justice Building so Yelena can get changed for the barbecue. Natasha sits on a couch and eats grapes, sifting through the pages of an outdated issue of _Capitol Living_ and pretending to care about home décor when motion by the door steals her attention.

She looks up, and there stands Clint Barton in the doorway.

“Get lost, Barton?” she muses, purposefully flipping to the next page in her magazine even though she’s no longer reading.

His grin is splintering. “Only if a Peacekeeper asks.”

He steps fully into the room, letting the door fall back to a close behind him. Natasha closes the magazine, placing it on the couch cushion next to her. “Breaking and entering’s a crime, you know.”

“I’m offended you think I’d get caught. I happen to have some finesse.”

The laugh leaves her throat before she has the chance to restrain it. “Finesse,” she repeats. “I’d love to see the day.”

Yelena, who couldn’t absolutely care less about being stuck with a pin, shuffles forward into the conversation. “And I’d love an introduction," she cuts in, giving her patented _what the hell_ glare towards Natasha. “Yelena Belova.”

“What, am I your dirty little secret or somethin’, Tash?” Clint chides, Natasha’s face dropping into a scowl. He extends his hand out to Yelena, giving hers a firm shake. “Clint Barton, pleasure.”

Yelena’s eyes widen. “Hawkeye. Wow. Natasha didn’t tell me she had friends in high places.”

“Clearly, Natasha doesn’t tell you much at all.” He leans forward, dropping his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Has she told you about her Tigris originals collection?”

“O _-kay,”_ Natasha sings, pulling herself off the couch and sauntering towards the two of them. “Let’s not give the virgin all my dirty secrets, Barton. I gotta have something up my sleeve to keep her in line.”

“And to think, I thought Fury was the dictator in Two,” Clint whistles. “You growing your hair out again?”

Her shoulder bends in a tiny shrug. “Don’t know yet.”

“Looks good,” he compliments.

“Thanks.” Natasha can feel Yelena’s eyes bouncing back and forth between the two of them like a ping-pong ball. “Coulson and May buying you time while they talk to the Mayor?”

“Nah. They left long after the ceremony in the plaza; Coulson claims he has to mentally prepare for the barbecue. The man’s recently sworn off pork.”

“Hasn’t he had enough death sentences for a lifetime?”

“Guess not.”

Natasha then hears it coming from what seems like a mile away – the telltale click of heels against a tile floor, the sign that Cassiopeia has found the very spirits she set out in search of and is close to returning. Even after all this time, she’s yet to lose her penchant for rule following, and Natasha isn’t in the mood for a lecture. “You better get lost,” Natasha hisses, pushing Clint towards the door. "Seriously, go."

“Ow, _Jesus_ , okay!” Clint ducks away from her hands, straightening up once he’s at the safe distance of the exit. “See you later. Nice meeting you, Yelena.”

Yelena’s hand lifts in a half wave. “You too!”

Clint leaves them with one last smile, slipping back behind the door like he was never there.

“Okay, what the fuck was that?” Yelena asks the second they’re alone again, Natasha retreating back to her couch.

“What was what?”

Yelena’s green eyes seem to double in size, almost comedically. “What—” she splutters in disbelief, gesturing behind her at the door. “ _That_. Him.”

“Barton?” Natasha picks _Capitol Living_ back up, tearing another grape off the stem. “We’re friends.”

The skepticism only heightens. “He called you Tash.”

“I let you call me Natalia,” she counters.

“Okay, but that’s different.” Cassiopeia comes bursting through the opposite door with a bottle of something in her hands, trilling on to everyone and no one about the quest she went on in search of it. Yelena shuffles closer to Natasha’s couch despite the dismay of her prep team, voice lowering. “Is there something…you know…”

Natasha glances up as her brain fills in the rest, bewilderment splashed across her features. “Are you okay? Is that corset too tight?” 

“There isn’t even a corset in this dress,” Yelena hisses. “You are trying to distract me.”

Natasha rips another grape off the stem. “Drop it.”

“Because I’m right?”

“Because sticking your nose places it shouldn’t be and running your mouth about it is an excellent way to get knifed.”

Yelena arches an eyebrow, but she falls silent as suggested – threatened – and follows one of her prep team’s polite directions to place her hands on her hips.

“It’s nothing,” Natasha finally decides to toss out, hoping it will at least dial back the rate at which Yelena’s eyes are drilling holes into her head. “You’ll see if you go to this year’s Games. You’ll get close.”

Yelena grunts out a wordless acknowledgment, the doubt still blatantly draped across her expression.

It’s a clear night in Ten, perfect for the occasion. Yelena’s not as frosty as Natasha was – she truly is an upgraded version of the blueprint she left, all warmth in contrast to Natasha's ice the way she's able to melt a room and still be every bit the killer they wanted. The mayor doesn’t stare at her chest nearly as much as he did Natasha’s, occasionally spotting his wandering eye back on her, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes. Yelena socializes and Natasha drinks.

Someone pushes Clint up to the front and shoves the guitar in his hands, him acquiescing and playing two songs for the small crowd. Everyone watches on quietly, all awe-inspired smiles and hushed compliments as they listen on and revel in his music. Natasha is just another member of his audience, utterly spellbound by the melodies he plucks out. She just doesn’t wear it on her face.

An offhanded comment pops up in her brain that he is magic when he sets the music free.

His grey eyes are cloud free when they find her, clear enough to see the stars reflecting in. She holds his line of sight for so long that she feels like a rubber band being stretched; the pressure of the snap builds and builds, but she remains anchored on him.

The applause jerks her back into the present, Natasha bumping her wrist against her forearm as contribution. 

Everyone goes back to socializing, celebrating Yelena – who, at the moment, is avidly chatting with Coulson about something, and Natasha returns to whatever shadows she can find until someone draws her back out. She smiles politely at the other guests of honor, answers questions and tries not to clip her words too harshly, pouring herself another drink to get through it.

“Your girl,” Clint’s voice suddenly ghosts down her spine once the mayor’s wife walks off after telling Natasha what a lovely dress she’s wearing. “She gonna miss you?”

Natasha shifts around so they’re face to face. The look on his face promises mischief, and she can’t resist the smirk that pulls at the corners of her mouth. “She’ll be okay for a little while.”

Clint tips his head to the side, cuing her to follow after him. She takes a quick glance around – no one’s going to miss her, she’s not the main attraction anymore – and sets off behind him.

He leads her through the open fields, the glow of the party growing farther away as they shuffle through the grass side by side. “You know,” Clint says, splitting the silence between them wide open. “When you step on grass, you kill it.”

Her head lifts, looking at him quizzically. “It’s true,” he insists with a small laugh. “We’re killing what very little grass we have here in Ten just for a minute alone.”

“How tragic,” she muses playfully.

They stop when they reach a small cluster of trees, Clint sitting down on a rock and patting out a space beside him for Natasha. “Yelena’s an interesting one,” he points out.

“She is.”

“Reminds me a lot of you.”

“That’s who they wanted her to be.” Natasha brings the rim of her cup back to her mouth, lips pressing an absent kiss against the surface. “It’s all about being slightly better than the one who came before you.”

“Seems like an exhausting way to live.”

“Well when the alternate is death… _literal_ death,” she emphasizes.

He leans into her, bumping their arms together. “Who did you want to be?” he asks. “Before you lived and breathed the Games.”

She has to think on that, staring out towards the skies and hoping the stars will spell out an answer for her. No one has ever let her choose. “I…don’t know,” she finishes half-heartedly.

“I thought I’d be in the slaughterhouses forever. It was the first stable place I’d ever really been. Maybe one day I’d make enough to get away from the gory work, raise cattle or something, but I’d never stop working. Can’t stop working, not if you want to live.” He releases a deep exhale, his posture losing rigidity as the air escapes him. “Now I just want to be more than the guy who can fire an arrow from either hand.”

The frown etches its way into her lips. “You are,” she insists.

“Natasha—"

“No,” she argues, feeling something like bravery swell in her chest. “You are. You’re…you’re _good_ , Clint. Not many people who live through the Hunger Games can say the same.”

A dark look befalls him, and she can’t decipher if it’s just the way the moon continues moving through the sky or it’s something else. “Nobody decent wins the Games, sweetheart. I am no exception to the rule.”

“You see a little too much in black and white,” she mutters, pricking his interest more than she means and prompting her to flash a _come on_ look his way. “There’s more grey area than you think.”

“We have to live in the grey to survive.”

“Yeah, but…” She shakes her head, red tresses leaving her face and spilling down her back. “You have a moral code. Whether someone else thinks it’s fucked or not, you still have a code. You don’t like to stray from it. True?” His silence is all the answer she needs, a half smile of satisfaction sprouting in its place. “I believe there’s flexibility, trying to find the balance. How much darkness do you counteract with light? What stays in your ledger, what can you get out?”

Her words hang in the air between them for a moment. It’s naïve to think they’re ever anything solid; they are splattered and scratched and stained and covered in a dozen different shades. She sees it in the mirror, reminiscent of the sky she turns out to look at. Black. Illuminated with the stars.

He then nudges her arm again with the point of his elbow, smile returning to his face. “C’mon, it’s your turn. Who did you want to be?”

“A ballerina,” Natasha admits after a moment of ponderance. It’s childish, she knows, but when she was little and spending all her time daydreaming about things other than a perfectly balanced knife, Ivan showed her what ballet was and she was enthralled. The rhythm, the grace, the technique; all the same things she learned to love about weapons handling and fighting. It was why she chose it as her talent. To her, dance and killing were two sides of the same coin. 

“You would look good in a tutu,” Clint laughs good-naturedly.

“Hey, I didn’t tease you, cowboy.” He rolls his eyes as Natasha takes another sip from her drink, falling her way back into solemnity with every new word that parts from her lips. “That dream died pretty quickly. Once Ivan let me in the Academy, all I wanted was to be a victor. Guess I got where I wanted to be.”

“How about now?”

“Dunno.” Her shoulders fold in an awkward shrug. “Who do you want me to be?” she asks quietly, eyes casting down towards her nails and studying her cuticles as best as she can in the dark. She remembers the chains that come with choice, why there was a certain liberation she found in adherence: it’s easier if someone else decides it for her. She follows orders much better than she ever will calling her own shots.

When she finds the nerve to look up at him, the numbing sweetness in his eyes is enough to paralyze her on the spot. There is something inexplicable there, something she’s not sure she wants put into words out of fear it will dilute it or make it all the more real. “You,” he finally answers, his voice low.

She knows he doesn’t mean the version of her that has every rough edge smoothed, all rose and poisoned honey and golden glory. He’ll take her with open wounds and blood on her lips and darkness filling the cracks of her bones at only a few inches tall, and she’s always known it.

He’s always seen the remainder of the person she is and she keeps chasing it like a shadow. 

Gravity has a grip on the back of her neck and tells her to fall into it, guiding her even when she doesn’t trust it (because she doesn’t trust much of anything, but she thinks she trusts Clint, because he’s only seen what’s left of her because she let him). They’re like planets, blindly following the course of orbit that leads them towards each other.

They’ve barely moved a few centimeters but something brings them to a pause. Perhaps it’s because they’re making too much of a moment, or because something in them knows a collision will result in destruction. She turns away, bringing her drink back to her lips as they go back to watching the stars in the empty sky make mistakes that only they know the results of. 

It’s somewhat awkward when she hugs Clint goodbye at the end of the party and their team is one foot out of the door to the train station, but all it takes is a reassuring smile to wash the careful architecture of her apprehensions and anxieties away with the tide like it's nothing. 

Natasha can’t sleep that night on the train, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter anyways, because the entire fucking compartment can hear the screaming coming from Yelena’s room. Natasha pulls herself out of bed and braces herself for the worst when she presses the button on the wall to open the doors.

Yelena’s tangled in the sheets, straitjacketed by her fear and just stirring out of whatever nightmare has overtaken her. “Yelena,” Natasha says quietly as she approaches the edge of her bed, careful not to touch her. “Yelena.”

She jolts upright screaming, her heartrate only beginning to level out when she sees Natasha there, stoic calmness guiding her to breathe. “I’m…I’m sorry,” she pants out, slumping back into the pillows. “Bad dream.”

“It’s alright,” Natasha replies, not needing the very obvious explanation. “They happen.”

Yelena’s hand moves from her forehead back through her hair, eyes closed as she tries to find a regulated pattern of breathing. She’s awake and not physically injured, so Natasha considers that as a job well done and begins to turn on her heel.

She doesn’t get far, Yelena’s other hand launching out from the depths of the knotted sheets and grasping at the edges of her shirt. Natasha stops, glancing back over her shoulder. “Please don’t go,” Yelena pleads hoarsely.

She’s staring at the same tiny, broken ball of a girl who had curled up into her lap on the rigid hospital bed and sobbed until she was dry-heaving and had nothing left in her, a tiny broken ball of a girl that she saved once before and that she’s probably going to always stick her neck out for. Because it’s her job.

Natasha eases down onto the bed beside Yelena, her entire body stiff. The Yelena she knows starts to peek out through the cracks, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to be a statue, Natalia.”

Natasha kicks off her slippers and throws both legs up onto the mattress, scooting next to Yelena and allowing her to wind her body around Natasha’s like the ivy she can’t get rid of on the back outdoor wall of her house. “I was back on the Cornucopia,” Yelena says in a tiny voice once they’re both comfortable. “And when I started cutting into her forehead, I realized it wasn’t her underneath me. It was me.”

“I always dream I fall into the lake instead,” she murmurs, letting the horrors behind her eyelids run freely around the room as they leave her lips. They have never quelled over the years – she’s just learned how to go back to sleep and wade through until morning. “It’s never James; it’s me, and those hideous mutts rip me limb from limb. I feel every bit of it.” A sigh escapes her. “Maybe that’s the problem. Feeling.”

“Closeness,” Yelena mumbles sleepily into Natasha’s shirt, the thin sheen of sweat causing the fabric to cling. “Nearly gets you killed.”

Natasha doesn’t know what to do, just strokes Yelena’s hair off of her face. “Yeah,” she whispers so quietly that she doesn’t feel the hum of her vocal cords in her throat.

♛ ♛ ♛

When they stop in Seven on the Victory Tour, Steve tells her he has something he’d like for her to see.

It’s a torn page from his sketchbook, splashed in watercolors. A stage is drawn in the center, ballerina with a splash of red hair frozen in arabesque. Her eyes drift up the stage, noticing the way Steve’s drawn the curtains peeled back, rafters and lights just barely exposed beyond the shadows. She can make out the outline of someone sitting watch, holding a guitar in their lap and one hand curved over the guitar’s neck.

Her and Clint. 

“I was going to put it on a canvas for you, but even I can’t work a miracle in a day.”

“I like it better like this,” she tells him, her lips bending in a soft smile.

She tucks it into her back pocket and keeps it there until they make it back to Two, where it finds a home in the same drawer as Clint's letter.

♛ ♛ ♛

Seventy comes and Natasha feels the heavy pressure of exhaustion pressing into her bones now that Yelena’s tagged along, and Yelena technically falls under her umbrella of responsibility. Showing a virgin the ropes of Games seasons is utterly draining.

Yelena’s nightmares are still bad, but Natasha cannot console both herself and her victor when the nights come. The idea of having so little control scares her down to her core and inspires bad decision making on her behalf. She does what she has to do – she smiles pretty and gets people to pass her pills to keep her awake and boost her energy, because she can sleep when she’s dead. Pulling a thousand pounds behind her with feigned effortlessness is the goal.

Clint is her escape, of course, even if things feel a bit like they’re tip-toeing around what happened on the Victory Tour. She lies to Yelena – which she feels only the twinges of regret toward – and says she has a client on the other end of town to earn her a night away from Two, hiding away on Ten.

She can’t sleep and neither can Clint, so they order food late enough to piss the kitchen off and sit in Clint’s bed, Natasha cross-legged and Clint sprawled along the length of the mattress.

“Mentoring’s going to kill me,” Natasha groans somewhere around a brownie and four AM. “This is why people like Fury and Hill are so good at it – they get us through the Games and then they leave us the fuck alone. I mean, they stay in our business, but they pretty much let us fuck up on our own time. With her, I can’t do that. I feel responsible for everything. _Everything._ ” She grinds the heels of her hands into her eyes, hoping the pressure will alleviate the frustration. (It doesn’t.) “It’s like all the shit she goes through, I have to go through it again, too.”

“I didn’t peg you for the bleeding heart type.”

“I’m not,” Natasha corrects. “But I like her, and she’s…”

“Having a hard time adjusting?” Clint finishes for her. Natasha’s affirmation comes in the form of a sigh. “You’re trying to help her, that’s what a mentor does. If it were easy, we’d all do it.”

“You know when the last time I slept was? Saturday.”

“It’s Wednesday _.”_

She just shrugs, glossing right over the concern saturating his expression. “I’m her mentor. Someone’s gotta wake her up from the nightmares.”

“She can wake herself up, Natasha.” Clint sits up, grabbing their plates and moving them off of the bed and onto the nightstand. “You need to sleep.”

“I’m fine,” she insists, the programmed response so effortless that it hardly holds any weight to her.

“Shut up,” he shuts her down, grabbing the tops of the blankets and turning them down. He stops, glancing back up at her with a shade of worry in his eyes that makes the grey skies look the same as they do when a storm is brewing on the horizon. “You _need_ to sleep, Natasha.”

There’s hesitation there, put on blatant display by the rigidity in her body and the anxious way she drops her line of sight down to her hands. When she dares to look back up, his eyes are locked on her. “I will wake you up from the nightmares,” he promises softly, squeezing her hand in reassurance.

She is reluctant but crawls into the bed anyways, letting him embrace her and melting away inside his arms. “I have a knife in my underwear,” she informs him in a whisper. Just in case.

“If you swing it at me, I’ll block it. I'll heal.” He hugs her a little tighter; when he breathes out, the release of air tickles along her hairline. “Go to sleep, Nat. I’ll be here.”

♛ ♛ ♛

Clint knows he’s in trouble.

He knows it when he makes a quiet prayer out into a godless void that every Games will turn up with a tribute from Ten or Two that has the odds in their favor, because he knows it means another year of him or Natasha getting a few hours together during the Victory Tour. He knows it when he spots her across a room and somehow finds himself by her side only a few moments later. He knows it when he gets in the Tribute Center's elevator with one destination in mind, knows it when he dismisses any idea that the cameras up in the corners of the training room are filming because time with her outweighs any sentence they crack on top of his head. He knows that she is worth breaking the rules. 

He knows that she is a thousand things and all of them are too hot, too bright, too damaged and dangerous to hold in his hands, but he doesn't care. He knows he'd do anything for her, whether she strung the words together to ask or it's only a shift of her eyes that make the suggestion.

He knows he has felt this way for years now, a shooting star across his mind that fizzles out as soon as it catches his attention. He has been living in a meteor shower for years as the heavens flood the night sky and scream at him to look up. 

He knows that he is in love with her.

He doesn’t know if she reciprocates it, but even if she did, it’s not like she would do anything about it anyways. That's not a luxury they have. 

♛ ♛ ♛

Steve’s Victory Tour exhibit expands just in time for Seventy-One. The expansion is entitled ‘Portraits of a Victor’ – apparently, it’s something he’s been working on for years. Clint thinks about the painting Steve gave him on his own Victory Tour that currently sits in his closet and wonders if it’d be better served elsewhere, hanging in a gallery for the masses to admire.

When he asks about it during Seventy, promising to bring it in time or send it with Seventy’s winner on the victory tour, Steve turns down the offer. “These aren’t like that,” he pieces together very carefully. “They just want a pretty picture, so that’s what they’ll get.”

But from where Clint’s standing, Steve hasn’t held up on his end of the deal. Every piece he strolls in front of is perhaps more charged than the next. There’s Tony and Rhodey in their arena, the moment when Rhodey had forced Tony to leave him behind for the mutts so he would have a chance to win. Thor when the giant tornado ripped through his arena, holding his intestines in as he stumbled to the Cornucopia to see if there were any tributes left and seeking refuge there, because he couldn’t understand why the Gamemakers would keep the storm raging if he’d killed the last one. Sharon Carter, opening a door in her ruined city arena that reveals a blinding Capitol on the other side (in her arena, she’d opened the door to a horrific ambush of mutts). The eye that Fury keeps hidden under his eyepatch, scars detailing down his cheek. Bobbi’s batons, fracturing a pane of glass – paying homage to the infamous moment when she chucked a throwing star at a monitor during her Games’s recap. Sam Wilson’s hand shooting out of the swamp he’d almost been pulled down to his death in. Natasha, dancing with both hands bound by strings, in the control of an invisible master (the lines are so thin that Clint has to get as close as he possibly can to make them out). Clint’s bow and arrow, gleaming in the dirt and his silhouette fragmented across the metal as he approaches. 

Clint doesn’t know what is the larger _‘fuck you’_ to the Capitol: Steve’s brash commemoration of moments that show what they’ve lost in exchange for their crowns, or the fact he’s befriended all these other victors enough to capture them in a way other Capitol-based artists would never be able to. 

The opening night is flooded with victors, mostly, a few other high-profile Capitol citizens milling around. Most of the victors congratulate Steve with a wry smile. The Capitol compliments usually center around how he’s done such a wonderful job capturing the best parts of any victor’s Games.

Clint, Bobbi, and Coulson all linger around a refreshment table once they’ve made the rounds in looking at all of the new pieces, making the idle conversation that found a home in all of them and has sprouted into forests over the years that they’ve diligently watered the seeds of diplomacy.

“Hey,” Bobbi says to Clint in a low voice when Coulson doubles back for another cookie. “When did that happen?”

“What, the cookie thing? Few months ago; I caught him eating sugar by the spoonful one night and—”

Bobbi rolls her eyes. “Not Coulson’s affinity for sugar. Romanoff and Banner,” she whispers with a hint of scandalized excitement in her voice, like they’re two schoolkids gossiping in the hallway.

Clint looks at Bobbi with a confusion that challenges his former knowledge of her tolerance levels and the sheer audacity of her thoughts. “What?”

“You heard me.” She uses the discreet gesture of her glass to point them out to him.

Natasha’s got her curls sleeked back, face totally revealed and telling even from a distance. Someone’s put a glass of wine in her hand in the hopes it will bring about a dazzling smile, the same one that close to ten kids were privileged enough to see before she slit their throats, and it seems to be doing the trick for Banner. He says something and she laughs, smiles thoughtfully, presses a kiss to the edge of her glass and leaving a red lipstick stain.

Natasha and Banner have always been friends. They’re part of the Six, so it’s not a surprise to see them together, but it is a surprise to see her working him like he’s an angle – or, maybe even just as a man she’s interested in, but Clint’s always found it hard to believe that any of the victors were capable of a love that is reserved for normal people who don’t get their lives handed back to them after they’ve killed people. They’ve always been friends, but Bobbi’s words grate at him and force his eyes open.

He watches Natasha rest a hand on Banner’s arm, Banner happy to place one of his own over it and lead her to the next painting on the wall.

Clint’s not a stranger to the way Natasha has to use touch rather than words. He’s been on the receiving end of plenty of sharp punches and kicks that spell out plenty of things her tongue can’t, but none of them seem to speak louder than the way she’d carefully run her hand along the lapel of Banner’s jacket, adjusting it back to perfection. 

All of her actions are deliberate, and so are the inactions. He thinks about the moment they’d shared back in Ten on Yelena’s Victory Tour, how gravity had gotten the better of them and started pulling them closer only to abruptly stop and set them free. He thinks about how they came back during Seventy and how it was lingering in the air, the way something in the bedrock of their friendship had shifted, but they’d let it rest in its shallow grave without any more disturbances. Instead they just kept moving through the motions of their normal: stealing food, speaking in glances, late nights in a locked room to ward off the nightmares, claiming the seat beside the other night in and night out at Coruscate, laying on the cargo net in the training center with their hands centimeters apart but never touching.

Never colliding. 

The wine is swimming in his stomach and his head begins to feel a little fuzzy.

“You know her best,” Bobbi continues. “Surely you know what’s going on there.”

“She can do whatever she wants,” Clint answers, detaching himself and whatever things the wine is stirring up from the situation as swiftly as possible.

It seems to take Bobbi by surprise. “Really? You don’t care?”

“Nope. Let her do what she wants.”

Bobbi drops it, thank God, and Coulson returns with an entire napkin full of cookies, which marks the ending of that painful conversation.

He tries to believe what he’s told Bobbi, he really does: Natasha can do whatever she wants, but his lack of caring is standing on uneven ground. He purposefully keeps his attention trained right in front of him, dialing back so that everything else is in his peripheral. It burns in the corner of his eyes, the things he can’t (or is choosing not to) see, but he tells himself to ignore it.

He swallows it down, but it leaves a bitter taste.

Clint decides to make another wrap around the exhibit, to look at the paintings one more time and hopefully time his circulation right enough to bump into Steve without any other company in his presence. He gets stopped at the portrait of Gamora and Nebula, seeming to holding each other’s hands with blood-stained fingers but closer inspection revealing the tiniest bit of space between their palms, which may as well be a chasm of distance. Steve is a master in the art of detail, the smallest of things delivering the hardest blows.

Somewhere, he gets lost in the gap between, only pulled back out when he feels the warmth of a limb brush against his shoulder. “Steve’s very talented.”

Natasha’s voice is like honey in his ears, but it hardens quickly.

“Yeah, he is,” Clint agrees stiffly. “We’re a talented bunch, us victors.”

She turns away from the painting, eyebrows knitted as she stares at him head-on. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he responds smoothly. Seconds tick by before the hollow question rolls off his tongue. “So, Banner?”

“Banner?”

“Yeah, Banner, you and him.” Natasha huffs irritably when she realizes what road they're on, and Clint remains impassive. “Hey, people talk. Good for you – if it is a thing.”

Natasha is well beyond miffed that he’s decided to make note of it. “When you look at something hard enough,” she responds coldly. “It’s easy to see things that aren’t there.”

So now she’s calling him delusional. He rolls his eyes, raising his glass back up to his lips. “Yeah, well that’s my talent. Looking at things. ‘S practically in the name.”

“What do you care?” she retorts.

“Just forget it,” he mutters, because it’s a safer response to the real answer.

They stand there for an insufferable amount of time, lightyears of distance between them.

It takes a few days, but he manages to mash it back down and the icicles she sends hurtling his way melt. He feels bad, but he doesn’t know that he’s sorry.

It’s just another fault line in the bedrock of their friendship that he’s going to have to dance around from now on to keep them from completely caving in.

♛ ♛ ♛

Natasha wishes it were different.

She wishes there was someone prettier, someone with a stronger sex appeal, someone who had carved out all of their emotional guts and was left fully hollow that would be able to stomach it all.

She wishes that Clint didn’t exist. She wishes that Snow didn’t exist. She wishes that James had ripped her throat out in the arena. She wishes that Clint had never been reaped and starved to death instead, the only safety in the slaughterhouse.

She wishes that she knew how to love him.

Love is for children, she thinks, and their innocence left them the day their parents decided to bring them into a world where they were destined to die on a silver screen. They were never children.

♛ ♛ ♛

In the middle of Seventy-Three, Gamora’s found dead in an apartment on the north end of the Capitol.

It’s like being submerged in a fog, where nothing takes a definitive shape and everything doesn’t make any sense. Suicide is ruled out, but homicide doesn’t make sense. Appointments have their dozens of shades, sure, but they never result in a victor dead. No one wants that.

Except, of course, on occasion, the victor.

Fury and Hill are too tangled up in their mentoring duties to service as the structure and glue the rest of them need. Nebula spends two and a half days locked in a bathroom until Mack breaks the door off its hinges to make sure she’s not dead herself. Bobbi can barely get a handful of words out before her eyes start leaking and she gets too choked up to speak. Hunter breaks three knuckles splintering a plexiglass coffee table. Yelena starts sneaking into Natasha’s room at night again because her nightmares have returned, but Natasha doesn’t really mind. They wake the other up when the screaming gets too bad, holding each other until the sun rises.

No one in the Capitol knows how to act. They adore and love Gamora, just as much as any other former Career victor, but mourning during their holiday season is uncharted territory for them. Death during these weeks are cheered on and treated as a spectacle, something they’ll rewind and watch a dozen times over if they really take interest in it. It’s different when it’s on their soil, someone they claim as their own. 

They hold an in memoriam tribute the night after it’s made official news, significantly longer than any of the other former victors that have passed back at home. Natasha cannot stomach to sit in Two’s suite during it, so she bolts to Ten’s floor instead.

“What do you think happened?” she asks Clint, the two of them perched by the window that overlooks the city. “You think it was an appointment that went too far?”

Clint’s shoulders wrinkle in a shrug. “I’d say that sounds pretty hard to believe, but considering?” He shakes his head. “It’d make a liar outta me.”

“Guess we’re not as invincible as we thought.”

Clint hums an agreement. “You think she did it?”

“It’s a rumor,” Natasha shoots down firmly. They’ve all hit their low points before, but no one ever goes through with any of the plans they make.

“Aren’t rumors just twisted versions of the truth?”

There’s something Clint knows, something he’s not telling her. “Why here?” she proposes, running with him for a second just to pick his mind. “Too much attention. Too much notice. She’s not the type who would want her death capitalized; we get to die outside of an arena, we earned the lack of spectacle when we killed twenty-three other kids.”

“Maybe there’s something here that she didn’t have at home.” He’s flashing her a look, urging her to get a pen and fill in the blanks for herself so there’s no way Big Brother can tie steel strings around their wrists. _What does she have here in the Capitol that she doesn’t have back in Two? People buying a night with her. A pipeline to all the things she can’t get on the transport trains: hard drugs, Capitol secrets. Adorers who would do anything._

Quill.

Clint turns back to the window. “Or maybe somebody just broke into the apartment and she was collateral damage,” he muses with a wistfulness that is entirely fabricated. “Sucks either way.”

“Yeah,” Natasha mutters monotonously.

She watches him for a moment, wondering if she could ever convince him to hook his pinky around her own and make him promise to take her out when it all got too much for her to handle.

When she sees Quill later on in the week, Natasha’s mind is quickly made up. She could never ask Clint to destroy himself for her. 

♛ ♛ ♛

Coming home without Gamora is hard. Two is not an easy place to live to begin with; they may live in the Capitol's lap but they still have a gun very much pressed to their temples. They're masons, and there is nothing soft about the stones they work with or the weapons they forge or the hunger that lingers in the pits of their stomachs. They spit Peacekeepers out across who have the softness whipped out of them. The ruthlessness of the Academy breaks children and builds character to align with their playbook. 

Natasha doesn't realize just how much she's relied on the others over the course of the last ten years until the bedrock starts to split. She doesn't face how badly she's needed them, _still_ needs them, until she's sitting alone in her living room with a flame-less hearth and a bottle of white liquor that's at least two years old. There are no more quarry picnics and wrestling matches, there's no more sitting in Hunter's basement (or accidentally walking into Hunter's basement when he and Bobbi are having a moment and teasing them about it), there's no window shopping in town or having dinner with Hill, no dying Nebula's hair in the kitchen sink or quietly helping Fury with the quarry kids who the Academy turns a blind eye towards and are carrying bricks on their back so they don't starve. Losing Gamora has snuffed them out and divided them, because her death was not due, or a train they'd all seen coming, or even the accident the Capitol's calling it.

She needed a way out far more than she needed them. 

Natasha comes to terms with the converse truth and how blatantly it applies to her. She had nothing when she won. 

She feels like she has nothing again.

Except for Clint. 

She clutches tight to him thousands of miles away while the rest of her starts crumbling apart.

♛ ♛ ♛

Seventy-Four’s a hard year.

Everyone can taste it in the air – the way things are shifting, the revelation that the fool’s gold is gilded after all, the conversations that are stiffer than usual if they’re not hushed. They’ve been doing this for years upon years upon years and while nothing has changed, their shoulders are shaking out of the numb spell where they’ve been carrying all the weight. Not that there’s any one person responsible, but riding the aftermath of Wanda Maximoff’s Games have been depleting. Victors set the tone for the year. Wanda has everything in a spiral and the victors are no different, looking in the mirror at the bags under their eyes and frequent nightmares and closing one another out so they can close in on themselves.

Clint sees May worried for the first time. Coulson carves wood until he runs out of trees and then takes to the walls of his house.

Natasha doesn’t mentor. Clint tries to offer to do it, just to take a little bit of pressure away from May and Coulson, but they refuse – they need it to stay sane, even if it’s just going to result in them having to watch another pair die. (Their girl stands a chance. The boy is bloodbath.)

He finds Natasha at a hole in the wall one night somewhere around the final eight, hammered out of her mind. It’s out of character for her. She never relinquishes control, even if she hands someone else the reins or tells them otherwise. This is the first time he’s ever seen her totally abandoned.

The blonde hair also contributes to the state of crisis she’s seemingly entered, Clint thinks.

“I like you better as a redhead,” he opens with, stopping next to her as he reaches across the bar for his own drink.

“I like you better when you’re quiet.”

“Ouch,” he deadpans. “Careful, Tasha, someone might think you like me.”

Her glare cuts him open. “What are you even doing here? Fury send you to look for me? Hill? Yelena?”

Clint takes the seat next to hers. “Who introduced you to this place?” he retorts, her silence servicing as the response. “You’re not all people think about, sweetheart.”

“I’m all they think about,” she counters. “You know what I did before I came here?” She doesn’t have to say it out loud. They both know. Her face twists further into the already-present scowl as she throws the rest of her drink back. 

“Yeah, well, that’s the price we pay, isn’t it? We live, and then they get to fuck and drain what little life remains out of us ‘til we turn to dust or try and swallow a bullet.”

They sit like that for a moment, waist-deep in their words and the uncomfortable, dirty truths that they don’t speak about but pay their monthly rent anyways. She breaks first in a broken sigh, her head dropping and finding a place to land on the edge of his shoulder. This is what they do: they somehow find solace in a hallway of broken glass and blinding promises, in each other. “’Least we have something to pay with,” she mutters hollowly. “Sometimes I think I’d rather be worth a fuck than nothing at all. It's something.”

“You’re worth more than that, Tasha.”

“If you say so.”

Words fail them, and it’s in those moments where their vices do not disappoint – they drink and drink until they lose track of the time entirely. Their tab gets conveniently misplaced by the bartender when it’s time to leave, and they’re only one step shy of holding each other upright on their way out to the car, waiting to take them back to the Tribute Center. Few people are still out roaming the streets, most of them indoors somewhere that they can glue themselves to a television and watch nightly recaps from the arena.

Their ride home is quiet. Clint lets his hand rest palm-up on the seat, Natasha’s fingers hooking over his own. Quick enough that they can jerk apart if their driver turns around. Enough to keep them glued together at the seams.

They get let off on the curb, left to just the two of them and an empty Capitol street where the echoes of Caesar Flickerman several blocks over are like ghosts yelling out about their final moments in that forested arena. Without the light, all of the rainbow buildings are black, Wanda’s storm cloud following their every footstep. “We can do damage control on my floor tomorrow,” he offers.

“If I so much as look at anything with an alcoholic content, please stick a fork in my neck.”

He starts to head for the entrance when her hand suddenly juts out, vining around his wrist. “Wait.” Clint stops, looks back at her carefully. A curtain of blonde hair is starting to fall past the barricades her ears are serving as; she is vulnerable and wasted and a raw nerve. This is a Natasha he’s only seen a few times before, which is scores more than anyone else. This is a Natasha that scares him more than one with blood covering her entire body and a knife in either fist. “I don’t wanna be alone tonight.”

“Okay, I’ll tell Coulson—”

Natasha gives the imperceptible shake of her head, taking another step closer to him. “I don’t wanna be alone tonight,” she whispers with every word armed to the letter, eyebrows arching suggestively. His stomach is the newest knot tangled in his throat. "I want to be with you." 

He remains still, frozen in place to allow his mind plenty of elbow room to reel. They've played a lot of dangerous games before, but this one feels most dangerous of all. “What are you doin’, Nat?” he mumbles cautiously.

Her hands grip at his collar, like if she can get as much of him in her hands as possible it’ll compensate the loss of her self-discipline somehow, put something back into her hold. “Please, Clint.” This has worked for her so many times before on countless others, but this time is different; he doesn’t think she usually looks as hollow behind the hooded green eyes. She’s a much better masquerader than that, takes pride in her craft.

This is her spiral.

Natasha gets closer and closer and closer until he can almost taste the alcohol on her breath and he drops his chin just in time, her lips just barely brushing past the tip of his ear before they kiss the empty air. His forehead is cast down towards her shoulder as he sighs, feeling the rigidity leach off her body in waves. “I’m not…”

“No,” she agrees flatly. 

“I’d rather be nothing at all to you than this.” This meaning a warm body to act as a sponge and soak up all of her pain. This meaning someone she uses because they’re both hurting and this has serviced as a band-aid in the past, but now they need stitches and their hands are shaking. This being a drunken fuck that skates over the fact that he’d cut one of his ribs out of his chest for her. 

She sounds a step beyond hurt in her dull acceptance – it’s like a betrayal. “You mean more to me than that.”

“If you say so.” His lips brush against the side of her temple, a hand curving around her wrist to lead her into the building, where he can watch her get off the elevator when it stops at Two’s floor.

She shows up in Ten’s common area the next morning with a box of red hair dye, enlisting his help. If she remembers anything from the night before, she doesn’t say. 

Clint thinks if they had to acknowledge it or talk about it, he'd be the one needing a fork in the neck. 

♛ ♛ ♛

May’s tribute, Daisy, winds up winning Seventy-Four when an earthquake rips through the arena and kills three tributes, changing the landscape and the stakes. She does her best to keep Lincoln, Coulson’s tribute, alive after he takes a sword to the leg. Clint can tell the boy loves Daisy and the editors really play up the romance for the audience’s sake, but it’s all for naught; there’s only one winner of this thing, and he succumbs to blood poisoning at the very end of the Games. The hovercraft beams her up holding his body.

Daisy’s seventeen and reminds Clint a lot of himself – no family, no past that she feels worth mentioning, a lot of mouth and a fighting streak that her mentor inspires. Clint takes to her easily. He teaches her how to shoot – she doesn’t pick up as easily as Kate did but he tries not to dwell on that for too long – and she hacks into his Capitol TV so he can get the premium channels.

Clint counts down the days to the Victory Tour, because the Victory Tour means going to District Two and District Two means Natasha.

He shows up to the train on the morning of with Coulson, and before they can get up to the loading platform, they’re stopped by Peacekeepers. “We’re victors,” Coulson tries to explain. “We’ve got permission to go.”

“New rules,” barks the Peacekeeper, voice tinny through the microphone inside his helmet. “Victor, mentor, stylists, and escort only. No one else gets on this train.”

Clint scoffs, unable to believe what he’s hearing. “That’s bullsh—”

Coulson places his hand on Clint’s chest, easing him back a few steps and diffusing some of the wires on the bomb with a contrite smile. “Our mistake,” he apologizes to the Peacekeeper, before shooting Clint a look that screams _would you like to get us killed before noon?_

They leave the station before the Peacekeepers find a reason to blast them off the platform. The train leaves without them on it. “Things are changing,” Coulson tells Clint that night at dinner in a low voice, like the oven’s got ears and will be reporting the entire conversation back to Snow. “Won't surprise me if they don’t allow us to go to the Games this summer if we're not a mentor.”

 _Let ‘em try,_ he thinks, jamming his fork into the overcooked pork chop. They’d have to kill him to keep him from seeing Natasha in July.

♛ ♛ ♛

It’s February when the Quarter Quell is finally announced. It’s the topic of conversation that occasionally gets mentioned at dinner, but quickly fizzles out due to the same suffocating presence it holds over their heads. The rulebook tends to be null and void when Quells are around – Fury knows as much, since he mentored Hill to victory in the Second Quell – with the only certainty being that people will die.

Yelena comes over the night that they stream the announcement from the Capitol. It’s no different than any other night, really, since Yelena practically lives with Natasha now. The word ‘codependent’ is an unsavory one, but Natasha’s not stupid. Plus, it’s nice to feel needed. Wanted.

They sit on opposite ends of Natasha’s couch, Yelena sprawled out and Natasha sitting upright with her beer resting between her knees. Casear Flickerman is running his usual commentary while they wait for Snow to go live, most of it passing in one ear and out the other.

“You think they’ll make me mentor this year?” Yelena asks. She hasn’t had to yet, since Mack and Bobbi have suddenly found a surge of desire to lead lambs to the slaughter in the last few years.

“Dunno. If it’s a Quell, they’ll want a seasoned mentor. Can’t see them risking a victor on a rookie – maybe next year.”

“Or, maybe someone will figure out how to preserve Hill's brain long after she croaks, and then she’ll be able to mentor forever.” Yelena’s cracked a grin, peering down the length of her body at Natasha. Natasha merely rolls her eyes.

“If only the world was so lucky.”

“Oh! And it looks like President Snow’s here and ready,” Casear interrupts, effectively killing off everything else in favor of the anticipation. “Let’s go live to the Capitol.”

Snow launches into his spiel about the significance of Quarter Quells, a monotonous drone at best. A boy, wearing white from head to toe, approaches Snow with a box that hold the announcements for every Quarter Quell from now until the end of time inside. Natasha is faintly aware of the heavy thudding of her heart, enraptured in every second with the anticipation and dread. She, along with everyone else tuned in, are holding their breaths.

Snow opens the box, retrieves the envelope, and slices open the wax seal with the fluid flick of a knife. “On the Seventy-Fifth anniversary,” he booms, words echoing out into the heavy silence. “As a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from the existing pool of victors."

Existing pool of victors.

Natasha is floored in place, the entire world around her coming to a halt and then ceremoniously shattering when Yelena throws her bottle at the screen. Someone – probably Snow – is still talking, someone – probably Yelena – is screaming, hurtling obscenities at the television. 

Natasha has been turned to stone, the only sign she’s still alive is the ringing in her ears.

The tributes are to be reaped from the existing pool of victors.

_Welcome home, Natalia._

♛ ♛ ♛

Clint has done the math approximately a thousand times over in the time between the announcement and the reaping. Ten has four living victors: himself, Coulson, May, and Daisy. At best, three victors will return home.

May will not want to go back into the arena, but if it’s to protect Daisy, she’ll do it. Daisy’s still something like a loose cannon – she’s only had a few months of being a victor, hasn’t had time on her side to help her level out after her Games in the way they all have. Another arena, back to back, will break Daisy.

Daisy’s not going to let anyone else die for her. Watching it happen to Lincoln in the arena was, simply put, emotionally devastating. The earthquake in her arena left dozens and dozens of fracture lines across her and the pressure of yet another sacrifice will either build strength or cause her to cave. (Clint’s theory is the latter: she’s still not far enough removed.) If May gets reaped, there’s a good chance Daisy won’t volunteer; no one would blame her. But if it’s Daisy, she won’t let May take her place.

Coulson’s the martyr type, through and through, and Clint knows it. It’s why he needs for them to call Coulson’s name at the reaping, so he can volunteer and take his place. If Clint gets called, Coulson will want to go in: to be with May, to look out for Daisy, no concern for his own well-being, and Clint will have to forcibly push Coulson into the ground so he’s physically unable to take his place on the stage. Coulson’s one of the good ones. Coulson – _Phil_ – doesn’t deserve to go out like this.

Clint has accepted that he is going back into the arena.

No matter how the odds play themselves, they are destroyed.

The reaping comes with a blistering heat, Clint feeling every bit like the herded cattle they are known for when the Peacekeepers march them through the town circle, past the rows of people cordoned off into the waiting corrals that have every eye on them. Beatrix, their escort, stands on the stage right underneath the Arch with the giant glass bowls that appears empty from where he stands. Empty, save for two pieces each resting at the bottom.

Beatrix is wearing some gaudy outfit that doesn't suit the sweltering weather, the triangular formation of gemstones plastered to her forehead creating a small glare whenever the light catches them. If it were any other reaping, his preoccupations would have been elsewhere: like how they've repainted the Arch specifically for this, or the surge of Peacekeepers lining the stage that have multiplied in number, or the way black lipstick only draws attention to the lopsidedness of Beatrix's smile. Instead, his entire body is thrumming with anticipation as the usual introductions sail right over his head. 

"As always," Beatrix says with her tone sliding into something that most people would categorize as sadness, pulling her black lace glove a little higher upon her wrist. "Ladies first."

Seconds last for eons as she shuffles to the bowl, having to stick her entire arm into the bowl in order to grasp one of the tiny slips of paper. Not even the wind dares to breeze past, holding its breath as it waits for her return to the microphone. "The female tribute for District Ten is...Daisy Johnson."

Clint glances over to their corral – May looks as though she is about to inch forward and say something, but Daisy gives the short shake of her head and pushes past her on the way to the stage. May remains unreadable. Daisy, next to Beatrix, is holding herself tall. There is a sparkling glassiness in her eyes, not just attribute of the afternoon sun. 

"Now for our gentlemen." Beatrix makes the same painstaking journey to the glass bowl, and every muscle in Clint's body is rigid. He doesn't even allow himself to peek in the corners of his vision at Coulson standing next to him. 

She breaks the tape seal on the piece of paper, bringing it up in front of her. "Philip Coulson."

She can barely clip off the final consonant on his name before Clint diverts out into the aisle, jerking away from Coulson so he can't pull him back. "I volunteer."

"Clint," he hears Coulson behind him, but Clint doesn't turn around. He shakes his head and allows the Peacekeepers to guide him up to the stage.

He stops on what's probably the same taped 'X' that was there when they called his name almost twenty years ago, next to Beatrix. "Well, there you have it!" she exclaims in a watery voice, her smile so cheerful that it's evidently forced and appears painful. "Your tributes for our Third Quarter Quell." 

Instead of the customary handshake, Clint pulls Daisy into a hug, a surprised Beatrix skittering backwards to clear from their crossfire. They're jerked apart a few seconds later by more Peacekeepers, all but dragged across the stage towards the waiting cars.

"Straight to the trains," he hears one of them muttering. "No goodbyes this year."

The joke is on them. Everyone he has ever loved here in District Ten is either boarding the train with him, or in a box in the ground waiting for him.

♛ ♛ ♛

They watch the reaping recaps on the train back to the Capitol. It isn’t like Fifty-Six, when the kids were all just names and faces of strangers. These are people he’s known for a decade or longer, people he respects, people he’s friends with. Snow’s knife is cruel and keeps cutting to the bone in a dozen different directions with every district that flashes across the screen.

District One pulls Thor. He looks generally excited, like Clint imagines most of the former Career victors to be. Another Games, another shot at glory: and this time, it's truly for all the marbles. They draw Carol Danvers as the girl, her and Thor looking like blonde angels of death when they join hands and the entire District One crowd screams.

District Three spits up Tony, which, if Clint was a betting man, he would have put money on every slip of paper in that bowl having Tony’s name in it. His girl, Pepper, gets reaped as well. Clint feels the bile rise in his throat, only slightly pushed back down when Janet Van Dyne volunteers.

District Five is Bruce. He’s going to be the wild card in the arena – he’s smart enough to know how to take them all out without lifting a finger. Or, he’ll have a repeat of his Games and go absolutely ballistic like he did when he saw his district partner beheaded in front of them. Clint thinks if he’s going to die, he’d want Bruce to do it, tearing him to shreds or otherwise. He only just recognizes Wanda, the girl who won Seventy-Three; she's still a newbie too, mostly kept to herself. 

Peter Quill gets called in District Six, and Clint's blood turns a little cold. If Tony's reaping wasn't rigged, then this one definitely was. 

In District Seven, they call Steve, who holds his head high the entire walk to the stage. Steve's all about the honor. He'd go into the Games to keep someone else from having to, and chances are, he's going to die to keep someone else from having to, too. Clint hopes Steve walks away the winner of all this if he doesn't. Steve's a Coulson: he's a good man. 

On and on it goes, friend after friend called up to the stage once again. It only gets harder to watch with each change of scenery and each new district that pops up. Coulson fast-forwards through the reaping in Ten; Clint imagines that Coulson's not happy about him volunteering and they'll have an uncomfortable conversation about it later. 

He purposefully avoids the District Two reaping until the very end, skipping back to it. Clint doesn’t give it too much thought, mostly because he's already two steps ahead and trying to think of how to tell Coulson he did it because it's turn to save him. It isn’t until their escort pulls the name out of the bowl that Clint understands why.

“For the ladies…” There is a pregnant pause as the paper is unfolded. “Yelena Belova.”

Clint doesn’t even realize that he’s been holding his breath until he exhales – exhales in relief that it’s not Natasha, that he’s got a reason to fight through these Games, a reason to kill his friends – as the cameras pan to the corral of victors.

And then he spots Natasha, her hair braided off of her face, who is as pale as a sheet at the announcement. He can see it in her eyes, what she’s about to do, and he edges forward on his seat. Coulson is a statue next to him.

 _Don’t_ , he tries to tell her, even though it’s a recording. _Don’t you fucking_ dare _, Romanoff._

“I volunteer,” she says with a voice like steel. Yelena’s neck nearly snaps as she spins around, horrified at what Natasha has done. She goes to shake her head, claw Natasha back into place so she can beat her to the stage, but Natasha gently nudges her to the side as she heads for the stage.

"Natasha Romanoff, everyone!" Cassiopeia cheers, encouraging the roar of the crowd along. Clint sits there dumbfounded, mind effectively scattered to the four winds and all the pieces returning in jumbled up directions and clusters.

They are both going into the Games, and only one of them is coming out.

Fury's reaped next, and the guys all start falling over each other to take his place. Eventually, Mack's the one who prevails, him and Natasha holding hands once they've both been introduced as the official tributes for the Seventy-Fifth and lifting them high. They are stone-faced, unforgiving and unyielding despite the chants from the audience. They do not accept these terms. They do not condone, and they will not forget.

Clint, on the other hand, is still trapped in the metal cage his mind has constructed. He and Natasha are going to have to kill each other, and the idea is so unthinkable that he feels the jolt of the bars, shocking him back into place and keeping him far from acceptance. It is the very sort of vicious that Snow would want to unfold, for them to spin and weave into a story and serve as reminder that they were always underneath his thumb and he was simply showing them mercy when he didn't outright smear them into the ground. 

"I take it you'll want an alliance, then," Coulson says before he shuts the reapings off altogether. 

♛ ♛ ♛

“You’re not gonna like this,” Fury warns Natasha. 

Natasha looks up from her steepled hands, an eyebrow raised. She wants to retort back that she doesn’t like _any_ of this, that that shouldn’t be news to him. Fury passes the tablet to her and presses play. 

She recognizes the stage first, underneath the wooden arch in the town square, remembers standing on it twelve years ago when she stopped in District Ten on her victory tour. When she met Clint. 

Daisy Johnson gets reaped first, and Natasha can’t comprehend why Fury would show her this. She barely knows Daisy.

Then they move to the males. 

Coulson’s name gets called, and without hesitation, Clint offers to take his place. Natasha’s heart is encased in concrete that dries quickly and makes the muscle ache to beat within the confines it sets. 

It’s that relationship between a victor and a mentor. She knows it: it’s the same bond that made her act on a whim at the reaping and push Yelena to the side. It’s hard to not want to walk into a graveyard for the person who saved your life or the person that you spent two grueling weeks of your life on edge trying to save. It’s what makes it impossible for her to hate Clint for doing what he did. She did the exact same thing.

And now they’re both going to lose. 

She carelessly throws the tablet across the train compartment and doesn’t wince when it shatters upon collision with the floor. Fury just sighs.

♛ ♛ ♛

The tribute parade is a joke, to no one's surprise. They're all forced into their ridiculous outfits to be trotted around on display, but somewhere along the line they've all made the unspoken agreement to not give a fuck. None of the tributes or mentors stick to their designated chariots, fanning out to socialize instead, the very thing they've all been doing for years. They're already going back into the arena: what else can Snow and the Gamemakers do to them to make them suffer further? 

Two and Ten, oddly, do not intermingle. Fury's crew gets so consumed in their conversation with One that they only break apart when the horses threaten to roll out without them, and Ten – specifically, Clint – hop around to the rest of the outlier districts to reconnect. Tony Stark's overly satisfied with the red-and-gold suit they've put him in, paying homage to that suit of armor that kept him alive back in his Games. (No one sees his face, either, obstructed by the mask. The jury's out on whether it was intended to be this way.) Steve gives the usual handshake and turns most of his attention to Coulson once he saunters up. Clint's able to get a real smile out of Wanda Maximoff when he stops by to say hello to Bruce, and he thinks that maybe everyone wrote her off two years ago. He understands her a little more now, anyways; she lost her twin brother in the Games she won. There's a lot more of the whole 'losing everything' going around lately, making her true colors a little less garish.

All the fraternizing in the world couldn't suffice as a thick enough rug to disguise the real issue at hand. At one point as they're going around City Circle, Clint spots her on the other end of the street. His eyes are like bullets piercing through her, and she's made of Kevlar. She doesn't acknowledge him.

The distance she's already putting between them burns him up.

The flames lick at his temper once the chariots file underneath the Tribute Center, and by the time he's made it up to their floor and changed out of his costume, there is nothing left but a raging inferno that is fully prepared to take whatever trouble he's about to get himself into and char it to ashes. 

There's a quiet ping when the elevator stops, the doors peeling back and revealing District Two's floor.

Fury is standing in the living room in front of the long sectional couch, caught off guard by the intruder. He doesn't have time to process Clint being out of bounds, only just getting his mouth open – probably to tell him to fuck off – before Clint interrupts. "Tell me where she is, and I'll consider not putting an arrow through your remaining eye."

It's useless to hurtle hollow threats at Fury, because what was he supposed to do? Stop her? Chain her to the corral and let her victor take her place on the stage, march to the slaughter? But Clint is so angry that he's seeing red and doesn't care who he's got to cut down to size in order to reach the real root of his problem.

"She's in her room," Fury responds in a voice that is not his own, levelled and quiet. Clint imagines he'll be paying Coulson a visit the second he's out of sight to bitch about how Coulson's victor has officially flown off the handle, as though they're teachers discussing their problem students on lunch break in the lounge.

"Thanks," Clint says flatly, directing his strides towards the bedrooms.

Natasha is towel drying her hair, already stripped of her parade outfit and fresh out of the shower. The gold paint swirling across her skin will take another two hours and vigorous scrubbing to fully remove, an effort she's not looking to commit to tonight. She's quietly eyeing the bed and wondering if sleep will ever befall her when the door opens with a bang, slamming all the way back into the wall and revealing an irate Clint.

"You're about eight floors off," she informs him without batting an eye, because she can't be too shocked he's here. If she wasn't processing her own anger in the way she was, she would've already beaten him to the punch. 

"And you are a fuckin' piece of work, Natasha."

If it's a fight he wants, then she'll give it to him. "So what does that make you?" she snaps, dropping the towel to the floor. "Last I checked you made the same choice."

"Two's got a hundred other victors that are probably dying for another chance in the Games."

She looks around wildly. "Who? Nobody wants this, Clint. This isn't the pathway to glory twice over, this is a _you're weak, and here's the reminder._ No one wants to win those Games. No one was going up there for her and we both know it." Her shoulders are squared as she draws back. "Besides, Coulson's closer to death's door than you are. You should've let someone who's had more of a life go."

"Nobody decent ever won this shit other than him. He deserves better. _He's_ better."

"And we're not?"

"You're worth more than all of this, Natasha, and you always have been."

"And so are you." Her arms fold across her chest, wet hair dripping down her shoulders and streaking through the gold paint. "So I guess that puts us both in the wrong." There is something finite in her voice, everything thrown to the ground just like her towel. Giving up is just sacrifice with a bitter taste.

"That's it, then?" he asks incredulously. "This is where we come to an end?"

"One of us is gonna die in that arena, Clint," she points out like it's written on the ceiling, and he laughs derisively. 

"We were gonna die anyways, it's just come sooner than we've scheduled."

"All the more reason, then." The nature of these Games are designed to rip them apart, after all.

He stares at her for a moment, the cement walls of his eyes painted over in the shades of betrayal that he couldn't conceal from her if he tried. "Why?"

"I'm...compromised," she hisses through two lines of perfect teeth, like every syllable is slashing through her and she's trying to hold herself together so she doesn't spill out her guts on him.

"Compromised," Clint repeats dumbly.

"Look what it did to Yelena. Look what it did to Wanda, look what it did to Daisy, Quill, Neb. They got attached and if it didn't almost kill them, it killed the person they—" Her breath hitches in her throat before she can say what follows. "I'm not going to let you die because of me," she says, small but resolute.

"That's not a choice you get to make for me, sweetheart."

"And that's why," Natasha finally answers. _That's why I have to be through with you._

_Because it will kill us both._

They reach a stalemate, weapons drawn and flashing in their eyes. "This is all we have left, Natasha," Clint breaks first with a sigh, the hope so potent in his voice that it floods her bloodstream and threatens to shut her down. "Are you not tired?"

She is exhausted.

He reaches for her at the same time she pushes him against the door, it slamming back into the frame a fraction of a second before their lips collide. It is years of frustration and anger and sorrow pining, long before they knew each other and _long_ after all coming to a head and exploding now that the sparks have found a new home in the powder keg. It's a language they've been dying to speak but forcing themselves to steer clear and talk softly in the words they know, and now they are free to scream however they please. He tells her how much he hates her with bruising kisses, and she makes him spit out empty promises when her teeth graze his lower lip. His fingers catch in the tangles of her curls and pulls out the apology he'll never hear, and her legs lock tight around his waist when he spins them around to pin her against the wood, reminding him of all the things they have to fear.

He tells her with every kiss and every touch that none of those things matter.

They're worth more than that. 

♛ ♛ ♛

If the Capitol's going to make them all look like fools, they may as well have fun at the circus. The three days that are reserved for training are spent, more or less, fucking around in the training center, if they bother to show at all. (Clint and Natasha show up three hours late on the first day.)

Everyone that does show does whatever they feel like doing, and none of it is what the Gamemakers would describe as legitimate training for an arena. Thor and Carol fuck up one of the stations that requires electricity to run until they have it fashioned into some crude live wire, making a game out of sticking each other in the side with it to see just how much energy they can handle without passing out. Tony and Janet take the pieces of the station Thor and Carol ruined and use it to create a tiny robot that Tony affectionately names DUM-E. Bruce brings an entire stack of _Capitol Couture_ and reads. Daisy, Wanda, and Mack arm wrestle for hours. Steve and Sam Wilson, the guy from Eleven, lazily toss a shield back and forth in a game of Frisbee. The Gamemakers sit in their viewing box, seemingly more invested in what all of them do than ever before, which is all the more reason for a metaphorical middle finger (or, in Tony's case, several literal ones). 

They push the tables together at lunch so they can all sit together. Clint sits with his feet propped up in Natasha's chair, his legs resting behind her back as they eat, listening to Scott Lang from Nine chatter on about absolutely illegal things he and his friends got up to at home that sound a bit embellished. The two of them keep orbiting around each other – they'll put a bit of distance between themselves only to fall back into the gravitational pull a few hours later. 

"You talked with Coulson yet about an alliance? Who you want?" Natasha asks quietly one of the afternoons in training when they decide to join Steve's impromptu art class over in the camouflage station, sitting off to themselves.

"You," Clint answers right away, having to think on the rest. "Steve." Sam Wilson will likely come with that territory as well – Clint thinks equally as high of Sam, so it's a welcome addition. When it all turns into a bloodbath, and it will, they're the people he trusts to not knife him in the back while he sleeps. The jury is still out on if he'll take Daisy. He feels like Coulson might give him that whole disapproving parental look of his if he doesn't. "What about you?"

She's got a sour look on her face when she grinds out the first name, like it pains her to do so. "Stark." That's a shock. "I know," she says when she catches the perplexed look he's directing at her. "But I don't have to like someone to trust them."

"That's it? Me, you, Steve and Stark? Our district partners if they haven't found a pack?"

"Maybe the two from Five."

"Have you even _talked_ to Maximoff before?" 

Natasha gives a small shrug. "Few times. She's not as bad as the others make her out to be. Misunderstood. I know what that's like."

"That's at least seven," Clint notes, trying not to highlight the obvious of it being nearly fourth of the tributes. That's five more people in his way, five more people he's going to have to look in the eye when he kills them, if someone (or something) doesn't do it first. "Big pack."

"I think that's the point they wanted to make." Her head tips in the direction of the Gamemaker box. She's on target with her assessment. That's why they're purging twenty-three victors in one fell swoop. They're trying to prove a point, and it is that their Games are not just entertainment, symbolic relic of the Capitol's victory. Their Games are a reminder that because they're from the districts, they will _always_ lose. 

The entire principle behind the private sessions is that they are meant to be private, so naturally, everyone shares what they're doing while they wait to be called. Thor, who cannot carry a tune in a bucket, is going to spend his fifteen minutes singing songs from his childhood about the great house of Asgard. Carol's going to sit in a chair and stare right back at them. Tony wants to build a house of cards. Bruce is still on the fence between taking a nap and telling the Gamemakers how many fashion faux pas they're in violation of, putting all his reading to good use. Wanda says she's dancing, and Natasha pulls her back to the corner to give pointers when she asks for thoughts. (It turns out Wanda is fascinated with ballet.) Steve says he's going to paint something, to which Sam cries out on how he was planning to do the same. ("I have art skills they oughta be afraid of!" Sam insists. Steve replies, "You're not wrong, you with a paintbrush is a pretty lethal threat.")

Clint's going to throw darts at the ceiling. Natasha is going to tie her shoes.

If the Gamemakers get to make them the fools, they have no trouble turning the mirror on them.

♛ ♛ ♛

Interviews have different flavors. Different things appeal to different people – some sponsors flock only to the feisty ones, others live and die for the sob stories, some seek out something that they haven’t seen yet before. There’s seductive and detached and innocent and bloodthirsty and humble and enigmatic, dozens upon dozens of options to choose from. This year, no matter the way people choose to display it, the taste is present in everyone’s mouths when they answer Caesar’s questions: anger.

Carol’s sarcasm bites down hard. Thor tries to appeal to the masses with a few tears shed. Natasha is a diamond: hard, cold, leaving Caesar bleeding when he tries to cut past the exterior. Mack barely says more than a few words. Tony goes off on a tangent, to no surprise. Bruce says the Games can be unwritten as easily as they were penciled in. Wanda Maximoff makes it pretty clear if she makes it out, there’s going hell to pay. Steve never has a bad word to say about anyone or anything, but even he manages to voice some kind of disappointment. Scott Lang, the king of illegal anythings, is questioning the validity of these Games. 

By the time Daisy makes it to the interview chair, people in the audience are beginning to audibly yell out and interrupt Caesar’s interviews, someone in the sound booth cranking up the audio on their microphones.

Clint’s mad, just as mad as any of the others, but crying or spitting obscenities or flipping the cameras off aren’t going to achieve what they all desperately want. He doesn’t care because caring's going to do exactly jack shit – he certainly doesn’t give a single fuck about any of them sitting out in the audience and how they feel. This is how they’ve felt for _years._

Sucks to have something you love taken from you.

The interviews end unceremoniously, most of the Capitolites barely containing their rage anymore and calling for a cancellation of the Games. It’s not going to happen, though. Come tomorrow they’ll have forgotten all about the things they yelled at Caesar Flickerman once the blood starts pouring.

Clint doesn’t know if this is his last night. Coulson would argue that morbidity helps absolutely no one in this predicament, but it feels a little naïve to pretend that’s not the reality of the barrel he’s staring down. If it is, though, if it is his last night, he knows exactly where he wants to be.

He tells Coulson and May goodnight (and goodbye) and hits the Avox stairwells since the elevators have been shut off for the night. He jogs down the concrete stairs, trusting the symmetry in Capitol design to guide him down since he can barely see two feet in front of him.

Somewhere around the fifth floor, hands gliding over the railing as he takes the steps two at a time, his stride gets cut off when he bumps into someone head-on. “Shit,” he mutters as he stumbles backwards a step, the panic that he’s been caught a flash flood of ice in his blood.

“Clint?”

“Nat?”

They both quietly sigh in relief, Clint’s grip onto the railing loosening up. “I was just—” Natasha starts, and Clint finishes it with a lackluster “Yeah.”

Another pause follows, before Natasha suddenly launches herself into his arms, her own vining around his neck and tightening. Clint welcomes it, holding her close and breathing in the smell of her shampoo, committing it all to memory while he still can. “I don’t wanna be alone tonight,” she whispers into the place where his neck curves down into his shoulder.

“Me either,” he admits. “Up or down?”

“Up,” she answers, pulling away from him and tugging down on the hem of her sweater that she’s swapped her interview dress for. “Sightlines are better.”

He thinks that he’d rather die right now, with her, in the false pretense of safety in a back stairwell on his own terms than in whatever way the Gamemakers have schemed out. He’d take a life in this stairwell without his tongue if it meant they didn’t begin and end here.

He retraces his steps back up with Natasha following behind him. The door leading him back into Ten’s floor is a heavier pry from this side than the other, but he gets it open and shut without drawing any attention.

Not that there’s any attention to draw back in the suite – the Avoxes are cleaning up the kitchen in the dim light and the rest of the lights are off, everything abandoned now that whatever fraction of festivity has ended and the hard part has begun. Silence is a heavy weight pressing down and it has a wide, empty space to do so. They slip through the shadows, Natasha’s intrusion concealed in the darkness of the hallway.

They make it back into his room, Clint methodically closing the door so precisely that it slips back into the frame without a noise. When he turns back around, Natasha is already perched on the edge of his bed, eyes trained on the carpet.

“Hey,” he whispers quietly as he crosses the room and stops when he’s in front of her, his knees pressing into her kneecaps and one of his hands finding its way under her chin to tip it upright. Her green eyes are the cloudiest he’s ever seen them. “What are you thinking?”

“In that arena,” she starts, voice low. “Tomorrow.”

Already he knows what train tracks they’re barreling down. “Natasha—”

“No,” she insists. “I need to just...” Her fingers curl over his wrist. “We can’t keep pretending like we’re walking into something where we both make it back.”

“Don’t,” he warns her, because he knows what she wants and he knows he cannot deliver. He’s let a lot of people down, and he can’t do that to her, too. “Don’t ask me to tell you something that you know I don’t mean.”

Her face falls, shoulders deflating. “Clint—”

“I’m not making you any promises. I won’t ask you to make me any, either.” Like that when the time comes, he needs to for her to let him die. He doesn’t want to live if it means she has to die.

The way she looks up at him is proof enough that she’s not going to let it go, but for now, she is willing to concede. It’s the last night that they get together, alone, in a room, where cameras aren’t broadcasting them all across the four corners of Panem.

“Come here.” She swings her legs up onto the bed, sliding over and making room for him to lay down beside her. Tomorrow will be here in the time that it takes to blink, he’s sure, but for now, tomorrow can be worried over when it’s tomorrow. Now, he curls into her like a comma as they nestle back into the pillows, his head resting on her shoulder and one of her legs shoved in between his.

He memorizes the pattern of her heartbeat, how she breathes and finds himself absently adopting it for himself. “I don’t want any other alliance in there,” he mumbles into her hair at one point.

“Thank god,” she breathes out a sigh of relief, one he feels as it leaves the throat his forehead is pressed against. “I don’t care about the rest of them. I just want you.”

“You and me,” he promises. “To the end.”

Sleep never finds them – they watch the sun rise through the tinted windows just before he has to let Natasha go.

♛ ♛ ♛

Natasha thinks to take inventory when they load her in the launch tubes, feeling the mechanics under her feet stir to life and pushing her up out of the darkness. _Find Clint,_ she thinks, her heart hammering in her ears. _Get to the Cornucopia, get the bow and arrows. Find Clint. Kill the rest of them. The time for holding hands has come and gone._

She knows she’s the very thing Snow wants her to become, betraying the friendships she’s built on what turned out to be quicksand. She doesn’t care. She’ll be whoever she has to in order to see him through this.

As her head rises out of the top of the launch tube, sunlight finds the tiny silver chain looped around her neck and glitters. Salt brushes her tongue and the light blinds her, costing her a few blinks to regulate and adjust.

Water.

She is surrounded by blue, sparkling water.

Gratitude laps over her feet with the waves that she didn’t let Yelena into this after all.

Scott Lang is beside her about twenty yards out, and then a giant spoke separates her from Sam Wilson. Everywhere she looks she sees the same. Two tributes boxed in by spokes. There is no rhyme or reason to how they’ve been placed – her eyes dart around, trying to find Clint in the glimmering sunlight but she can only see so far, the perfect obstruction of the Cornucopia in her way.

She commands herself not to panic. Instead, she takes the key to a drawer she has shoved so far down she doesn’t even allow herself to acknowledge its existence and unlocks it, letting the echoes of Ivan spring loose. _Kill anyone in your way. Show no mercy. They won’t._

Claudius Templesmith is counting down, and Natasha whittles her focus down into a blade. _Water could be poisonous. Could be a trap, could be mutts._ But there is no other way to the Cornucopia, no other way to the beaches. It’s risk versus reward. She’s already nestling herself into the metaphorical guillotine for the reward of Clint getting to live, so any risk she has to take is minute.

Jungle, she notices. There’s jungle beyond the shores, judging by the thick foliage that's opaque from a distance. Clint. Cornucopia. Jungle.

Death.

The gong booms, signaling that their minute is up, and Natasha does not hesitate. She dives off of her platform, the balmy ocean water encompassing her. The thought of it being a trap fades quickly, but she’s conscious to not let any of the water in her mouth, moving as fast as she can to avoid facing anything that might be lurking below. She swims through the waves until she reaches one of the spokes that blocked her in, using the rocks on the edges to hoist herself up. Her feet carry her down the narrow ledge as fast as she can manage, only stealing split second glances around her. Most of the others are still standing on their pedestals, surveying the waters. Watching. Waiting. Some of them don’t know how to swim.

Then there are others, not far behind her as they swim for the spokes or are already pulling themselves upright.

She’s sprinting now, carefully dodging her way around the dips in the path the irregular rock placement has provided. The Cornucopia sits on a rocky island in the middle, sloping upward from the spokes. She’s there before she knows it, rounding the side of the Cornucopia to get to the mouth where all the treasure is.

As far as she knows, she’s first. Clint’s bow and arrow sit propped up against a chest, Natasha instinctively grabbing them and slinging them over her shoulders without sparing an extra thought. She looks for extra arrows and maybe another bow, picking up knives and anything else relatively small she can attach to her person as she goes. She has an eye out for water, maybe even food – matches won’t be necessary, this is a far cry from her frozen Games and the humidity in the air all but guarantees a miserable time starting a fire – but there’s nothing but weapons.

The Gamemakers want the water to run red.

She spots a replication of her Widow's Bites, a gladly familiar sight, and Natasha straps them onto her wrists where they are at home.

The sound of footsteps approaching alerts her – she’s already got a hand on the hilt of a knife, ready to throw when she sees that it’s Clint. “Just weapons,” she calls.

“That's it?”

“Yeah, I—” Movement behind him catches her attention, eyes narrowing. “Two o’clock,” she yells, utilizing the knife already in her grip and sending it whizzing right past Clint’s head. It buries itself in Peter Quill’s throat, and she doesn’t feel anything at all about the death sentence she’s given him. This is what she was made to do, and now she has something worth fighting for.

She throws the bow at Clint, who’s already found another quiver of arrows and got them strapped to his back. He catches it with one hand and draws the arrow with another, all a part of the same fluid motion he uses to fire at a charging Janet Van Dyne. She narrowly misses the shot, instead diving down into the water.

Together, they are something dangerous and divine, the way they operate like extensions of each other without hardly a word, and it makes her adrenaline leave a sweet aftertaste in her mouth.

“What’s the plan here, Natasha?” he calls over his shoulder, another arrow already nocked and searching for another target. “We staking our claim?”

She knows she could end this here and now, but that's arrogance, and arrogance is the only thing that kills faster than a snap to the neck. Mack and the others from One haven't shown up yet; this puts them at least three Careers behind schedule, three Careers who are trained just like she is and have thrown friendship to the wind just as quickly. Niceties are smashed, alliances have evaporated. She's chosen Clint, and now she needs to start making the decisions that are going to save his life. Tucked away in the jungle, at least, they're out of sight, and out of sight equates to out of mind. 

“Grab whatever you want,” she decides, only a second of deliberation passing her by. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

“Jungle?”

Jungle.

♛ ♛ ♛

When they’re sure they’ve got a clear shot to the beach, they take off down one of the spokes all the way to the shores. They’re armed to the teeth, which makes Clint feel slightly better about ducking into whatever lies beyond the greenery – only slightly. No food or water at the Cornucopia (or in the entire damn arena, he’s not feeling very confident) and an innumerable amount of dangers that could be waiting on them the deeper they go.

It's not a forgiving arena. There's no mercy to be had.

Their feet hit the sand and they dive straight through the leaves. They don’t stop moving uphill until they’re sure they’ve got enough foliage to serve as a cover, and by then, Clint figures they’re deep enough into the jungle that not even their closest neighbor is within a stone’s throw. Natasha seems to have it all mapped out in her head, so he’s more than content to let her take the lead in navigation. He’s better at following her, anyways. She was made for this kind of thing. This is her playground.

Natasha grabs his wrist at one point and gently tugs him back to the tree she’s leaning up against, her cue to stop and take a moment to regain their breath. The arena is muggy, and even in Career-shape, the slightest bit of physical activity does not bode well with the moisture in the air.

“Quill’s dead,” she breathes out. “That’s at least one.”

“Just one death so far?” If that’s all the fatalities the bloodbath draws, the odds will crush them.

Natasha shakes her head. “It’ll get uglier than that. Van Dyne, Mack, Odinson, Danvers…they’ll take people out. Friendship time’s over.”

The hollow way the words and their names leave her mouth drag a chill down his spine. They are really back in the Games.

Clint’s eyes trail up the tree Natasha’s using as a crutch – or as a shield, she’s _covering them_ – and gets an idea. “Move out of the way,” he tells her, slinging the bow onto his back along with the quiver and grasping onto the trunk of the tree. “I’ll try and get a look.”

He gets his hands situated on the trunk, just about to propel himself off the ground when she grabs his shoulder and pulls him back.

“You’ll break the tree and then your back,” she points out.

He glares at her, utterly scandalized. “Are you calling me fat?”

“I’m calling you a known enemy of aerodynamics.”

As if to make a case, he tries to wiggle the tree. It doesn’t give, as he’d expected, and the smug look that accompanies it triggers the roll of her eyes. “I’m not headed for the tip tops of the tree, Romanoff, I’m just going to climb up high enough to get a peek.” His hands wrap back around the trunk, foot propped up against the edge before he stops and shoots another look behind him. “And I’ll have you know I am _very_ aerodynamic.”

He’s been up in enough trees during his lifetime to know that there comes a certain height when he’s on the verge of proving Natasha right. He manages to find a steady spot right at the breaking point where the tree line meets the sky, able to see down to the Cornucopia. Bodies float in the water, and indistinguishable figures keep fighting.

Natasha, as always, is correct. The time for friendship has ended. Now it’s about survival.

From here, it is easy to feel like a grain of sand. The arena stretches out for miles in every direction, farther than the eye can see. With slow, still motions to keep his balance steady, he reaches for his bow and an arrow from the quiver and aims for the sky. He sacrifices the arrow in the release, shooting straight up. The arrow sails into the sky, before it hits an invisible barrier and goes tumbling down to the ocean below.

He’s not sure what in his muscle memory has called him to make the shot until he sees it: the glimmer of a forcefield and the shape it takes.

The arena is a dome, meaning the symmetry beyond the perfection of the Cornucopia and pedestals extends into the jungle. It’s all a big circle.

Clint makes his way back down the tree, telling Natasha this before his feet have the chance to hit the spongy earth. “No end in sight,” he says. “But it’s a circle, so it’s not like we’d find one anyways.”

She only takes that into consideration for a split-second moment that she gifts a nod. “And at the Cornucopia?”

Clint jumps the remaining five feet and lands on his feet. “Still fighting. There’s bodies in the water.”

“We need to find it. Water.”

“Water,” he agrees, the tip of his head to the side serving as a gesture. “Which way?”

“Guess it won’t matter much if we’re in a circle.”

“Good point.”

They peel off to the right anyways.

The hunt for water is grueling, and very rapidly what little morale they have starts to slip away. They see tiny animals scuttling from plant to plant, scaling trees, which means that there has to be a source of water somewhere, but there’s absolutely nothing. No rivers, streams, not even a goddamn puddle. Clint hopes that whatever Coulson’s doing right now will directly result in a sponsor parachute.

“Maybe the ocean’s the only water source in the arena,” Clint muses as they trudge through the jungle much more languidly than they had in the beginning, the blistering heat and humidity taking its rapid toll on them.

“It was saltwater.”

“Well, it’s fucking hot enough to boil the salt out.”

“That’s…not exactly how that works.”

Clint brushes his forehead with the back of his hand to wipe away some of the sweat. “Whatever. Same difference.”

Natasha starts to say something else, but she’s interrupted by the booming sound of the cannon. _Two. Three. Four. Five._ They exchange a look as they count in silence, Clint holding up a finger for each kill. _Six. Seven. Eight. Nine._

The cannons stop, and Natasha’s face twists into a grimace. “Only nine.” She doesn’t sound very optimistic, a sentiment that Clint shares. It means there are still fifteen people alive. Thirteen people standing in between him and making sure Natasha’s on the hovercraft back to the Capitol alive.

“Let’s hope some of the fifteen have just as a hard a time with the water thing as we are,” he grumbles, trying to make light of the mood, because he can’t handle anything heavier than his conscience and the humidity on his shoulders right now. It’s too fucking hot for that.

It feels like they walk for forever, and dehydration starts to kick in quickly. Night sets in sooner than they anticipate which doesn’t bring about cooler temperatures – just a muggy night that’s equally as uncomfortable as the daytime. They finally throw in the towel, sitting down next to some large fauna that’s got enormous, drooping leaves. They decide to lay down in the dirt, which isn’t nearly as cool as they expect it, with their heads resting underneath the bare minimum of shade that the leaves provide.

It’s a nice illusion of privacy; even though there are probably micro-cameras in the ground, it feels like a moment alone with Natasha.

“We’re gonna die of dehydration soon if we can’t find water,” she points out rather matter-of-factly.

“Sweetheart, we’re back in the Hunger Games. We’re gonna die anyways.”

Natasha sighs shallowly, staring up at the underside of their leaf. “This sucks.”

“Yeah.” His hand brushes over hers – quite frankly, he doesn’t give a damn if it becomes some sort of explosive thing across the Capitol screens or a trending headline. They’re going to die anyways. Her grip tightens around his palm, but he maneuvers his hand so his fingers fall in the spaces between her own. “’Least we’ll die together.”

“Yeah,” she utters back vacantly. She smiles at him but it falls short, not even coming close to lifting off her lips and reaching her eyes.

Dinner is a lackluster event. He and Natasha make a game out of killing the ugly little critters that have a home in the trees. He shoots them out with arrows while Natasha tries to knock them off with a set of throwing stars she’d swiped from the Cornucopia and tucked into one of the compartments on her utility belt. They cook their kills and eat everything since the heat will result in spoils much quicker than normal. It’s a decent meal as far as an arena meal goes, but the lack of water’s presence only exponentially increases. The thirst is downright uncomfortable at this point.

The sun’s almost completely gone from the sky and Clint and Natasha decide to set up camp for evening where they’ve stopped. Natasha deems it fairly decent cover for the night, and if it meets her standards, then Clint reckons it’s as good as it gets. His heel is grinding down into the remaining embers of their fire when the tell-tale whistle of a parachute comes from overhead.

Both of them look up, watching as it falls from the sky and lands among the trees. “I’ll grab it,” Natasha volunteers, because Clint’s pretty sure she’s still a skeptic when it comes to him being in a tree. She scurries up the trunk, one hand clutching to a branch while the other untangles the parachute’s net from the leaves and frees it.

She jumps back down, frowning at the size of the parachute. They must have been holding out hope for the same sponsor gift, but the container isn’t even large enough to hold a single cup of water. “Shit,” she mutters.

“What is it?”

Natasha presses down on the seam and the container cracks open. Her frown only deepens as she pulls out what looks like a tiny metal whistle, hollow and tapered on one end. “A joke,” she summarizes.

She then pulls out the tiny notecard sent with it, eyes flickering over it for only a second before passing it off to Clint. “It’s for you.”

She’s right – the note is signed by Coulson. _Use your brain._

“Miss you too, Phil,” he grumbles.

He and Natasha wrack their brains endlessly trying to figure out the purpose of the little metal tool until the anthem starts blaring. They see Panem’s seal through the leaves, only barely able to make out the faces of the fallen. Sharon Carter. Peter Quill. Scott Lang. Sam Wilson. All of them are people he knows, all of them sting a little differently.

Clint doesn’t even realize that he’s been holding his breath until the broadcast cuts out and they’re left with silence.

“Nine down,” Natasha muses absently, twirling their metal tool between her index finger and thumb. “Fourteen to go.”

“Yep.”

They nearly kill each other as it is trying to figure out who takes watch first, but finally Clint gains the upperhand and sends a bitter Natasha off to get some rest. She takes refuge under a leaf for a little while as Clint settles down on some raised tree roots, but she isn’t gone for twenty minutes before she comes shuffling back out into sight. “Nat,” he sighs, preparing to gear up another _I don’t care if you can’t sleep at least pretend_ argument.

She plops down beside him, curling up next to him with both arms wrapping around his chest like a vise. “We’re gonna die anyways,” she argues quietly before he has the chance to ask.

He doesn’t question it (and wouldn't have), just reciprocates the arm around her and absently strokes at the braid in her hair while she dozes off.

There’s not a lot to watch for, even in as busy an arena as this one. His arena was typically dead during the nights – except on the ones when they dropped the lion and tiger mutts into the ring – but this one is constantly stirring with noise, insects and other animals wide awake as they roam. Clint loses track of the time fairly quickly, getting lost in staring into the depths of the dark and the mindless motion of playing with Natasha’s hair.

Telling time in an arena is a foreign concept, but they’re knee deep into nightfall when a boom echoes through the arena. Natasha jerks awake in his arms, shooting upright. The first assumption is a cannon, but that's very quickly disproven judging by the rapid secession they fire off in and the very different sound they have. No way twelve tributes died off that fast. 

Natasha counts every strike quietly, silence echoing out after twelve. “What the fuck was that?” she asks, looking up at him.

“Gamemakers fucking with us.”

“Probably.” She pulls herself up a little higher, nudging him with her elbow. “Alright,” she insists. “You got your wish. I slept. Your turn now.”

Clint knows there is no arguing with her, not really, and the dehydration has him running dangerously low on fumes, so he slides down until he’s fully on the ground and his head is resting in her lap. “Wake me up in three hours,” he instructs, chin lifting and pressing down into her thigh as he looks up at her. They can’t afford any more downtime, not when they aren't any closer to finding water than they were hours before. 

“Okay,” she agrees, although he’s not sure she’ll be fulfilling that request.

Well, he thinks as his arms snake around Natasha’s legs, at least if he dies in his sleep it’ll be happily.

He doesn’t die in his sleep. In fact, he barely sleeps at all. It’s more like he closes his eyes and then what could be seconds, minutes, or years later, is opening his eyes at Natasha shaking him away. “It’s raining,” she tells him, which catches his attention and subsides some of the restless sleep and dehydration fatigue. “Clint, it’s raining.”

Rain.

_Water._

He jumps to his feet – and stumbles a bit over the tree roots – with his arms wide open, letting the rain splatter across his skin. It’s not cold, but nothing in this fucking arena is cold, but he doesn’t care. It’s rain. He tips his head back, raindrops falling across his face. It’s a bit more than a sprinkling now, starting to pick up by the minute.

Rain is his new best friend, he thinks, as the rain slides down the slopes of his cheeks and brushes over his lips. His entire body is yearning, savoring the sweet moment of being reunited with water when he goes to lick over his lips and—

The taste on his tongue is not clean or refreshing. It is metallic, pungent, sickening to the point that he’s spluttering to try and rid the lingering flavor. It’s nearly impossible to do so without water.

“Fuck,” he swears, looking up at Natasha. “It’s not water. It’s blood.”

His words seem to trigger the opening of the heavens. Blood comes pouring down in sheets, hot, heavy, and thick. He can barely see a few inches in front of him, blindly trying to find Natasha. Her hand somehow finds his: he grabs onto it tightly and then they run.

They’re stumbling over their own two feet and gagging on the blood, trying to maneuver their way through the jungle without accidentally killing themselves by running straight into a tree. There is no sound direction. They’re just trying to get away, away, away, but the blood rain is everywhere. He's swinging the hand with the bow out in front of him to establish some sort of surrounding, and Natasha’s hand is wrapped in the other like it’s forged of iron, which is the only peace of mind he has. She’s still with him.

But the dehydration is still weighing heavy on them, so they can’t move fast for long. The rain is practically a flood at this point, beating down onto their heads and nearly impossible not to ingest. Clint wills himself to keep putting one foot in front of the other, pulling her along no matter how dead her weight becomes, because he’ll be absolutely damned if they die because of blood rain.

 _Blood rain,_ he thinks spitefully as he nearly trips over another exposed tree root. Fuck the Gamemakers.

The tiredness in his muscles grows only more prevalent, every step becoming more and more like shoving a cement block across carpet. The rain is blinding and even faith is proving a faulty navigator – he keeps walking, though, hardly even realizing that the rain has stopped until he’s blinking and nothing continues to weigh on his eyelashes and obstruct his vision.

He turns around to check on Natasha, who no longer looks like a person when she’s covered head to toe in blood, it plastered across every inch of her. She’s got the same baffled look on her face.

Clint’s stunned he can even _see_ her face.

Somehow the rain has stopped. It hasn't just stopped, but it looks like it never even began; the ground is completely dry, the tree Clint's leaning up against just as withered and dehydrated as he is. It's as though the rain reached a boundary line and came to a screeching halt, refusing to cross over. Beggars refuse to be choosers, though. He’ll fucking take it. 

“Wonder what horror show awaits us here,” Natasha says as she pushes the blood-soaked hair off of her face, her voice hoarse from the lack of water and the violent repelling of the blood forcing its way down her throat.

“I swear to god, Nat, if you’ve jinxed us…”

“Clint.” She redirects his rapidly dwindling one-track mind with a tug to his hand. “Forget it. Water.”

They've completely lost all sense of direction and their bearings, unsure of how turned around they actually are. What they need is the beach - even if it is salt water, it's still water, and it'll get off the blood that's now drying to their skin and creating an even more uncomfortable predicament than they'd been in to start. 

Natasha's taken the lead this time, and Clint's so thirsty he doesn't make much of her coming to a grinding halt. He keeps walking until he almost collides right into her, and she immediately stills him. "Natasha?"

She shushes him with the sharp motion of her hand and the hiss of air between her teeth, and suddenly her rigidity starts to take the form of a more complete picture.

They aren't the only ones in this arena. They aren’t the only ones _here._

There’s still a slight ringing in his ears, but the footsteps are almost impossible to miss. They grow louder, and even in the throes of dehydration Natasha’s shift into the hunter is unmistakable. She refuses to wear the skin of the prey. She suddenly swears under her breath, drawing out the machete she’s kept strapped to her thigh (and Jesus, Clint’s forgotten just how strapped she is and how beautiful her lethality can be – it’s proof he’s fading fast without water. Coulson’s probably screaming at his screen over him not taking his hint). Natasha’s still every bit the predator she was when she was sixteen in that winter wonderland, waiting for the moment to pounce. The footsteps are practically right on top of them at this point – Clint figures now might be a good time to start reaching for an arrow.

“Holy shit!” Someone shouts right as they nearly walk right into Natasha’s machete. If it weren’t for the sudden recoil backwards and the last reserved bits of brain power motivating Clint to intervene, it would have meant Tony’s death.

Tony skitters back, Natasha almost dropping the machete in an uncoordinated startle. “Do you always lurk in dark corners?” he swears, hand resting over his heart to feel for a restarted beat.

“Do you have to _yell?”_

“Pardon me for being scared within an inch of my life.” He does a once-over on Natasha, eyebrows furrowing as he does the same to Clint. “What the hell happened to the two of you, anyways?” he asks.

“Rain that turned out to be blood,” Natasha answers concisely.

Tony looks horrified. “Did you bring it with you?”

“Doesn’t seem like it. It stopped out of nowhere.”

“Kind of like the lightning?”

It’s Clint’s turn to wear the confusion. “Lightning?” he asks.

“Yeah, how the hell did you miss it?” Tony points behind him into the depths of the jungle. “Big tree. Really big lightning strike. My guess is anything within a quarter mile of it got fried.”

“Well, we were a little busy running through the blood rain to notice,” Natasha mutters venomously, a clear sign that she’s losing her patience.

Tony exhales, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “So whichever way you came from is a no. Guess we’ll just head back,” he states.

Making out Natasha’s eyebrows on her blood-soaked face is a little hard to do in the dark, but the look of shock is impossible to miss. “We?” she utters out.

“Yeah…” Tony is genuinely perplexed. “I mean, you didn’t kill me on the spot, that means something, right?”

Natasha chokes out a tiny undignified scoff, spinning back to look at Clint for some kind of backup. This had not been the plan. She didn’t want allies, and neither did he, because they know what it will all boil down to. Only one comes out, and he’s fairly confident Natasha’s got a similar game plan sprawling out in her head. Even through the shades of unpredictability, Clint knows who she is and knows her endgame.

Despite being an utter annoyance, though, killing Tony Stark on the spot feels a bit impossible to Clint. Whatever it takes has suddenly been clouded by years of loyalties. He knows he can probably force his muscles to string the arrow and shoot Tony right between the eyes with no problem, but for once the thought of killing someone is no longer a clinical, survival necessity. It’s nuanced with guilt, and this is the knife the Capitol keeps twisting between his ribs.

He has to keep choosing between himself and Natasha. He’ll choose her every time.

But right now they’re both dying from the inside out, and Clint’s not sure they have very much to lose. 

Clint cocks his head to the side. “You did want him as an ally,” he points out sheepishly.

Tony isn't supposed to hear it, but he does, and is all too overjoyed by this bit of information. If looks could kill, Natasha would be responsible for Clint’s cannon going off. “Oh, Red, I’m so flattered,” Tony croons.

“Shut up,” she growls. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m holding a very large knife.”

“I think you mean machete.”

“ _Stark_.” The threat in her voice gets him to back off, his hands slowly lifting in mock arrest.

"Is it just you?" Clint tries.

“Nah. It’s me, Rogers, and Maximoff. They’re not too far behind.”

“Letting you take the lead and catch the first cut?” Natasha grumbles, and Tony’s head tips to the side in a glare.

“They’re getting water.” The buzz word of the hour. It’s then that Clint knows he and Natasha can’t say no to the alliance.

Clint swings the bow back over his shoulder. “Lead the way,” he says to Tony.

The whole walk, he can feel Natasha’s eyes drilling holes into him. But he knows her argument, while valid, can’t stand solid while they’re still wobbling with dehydration and Tony’s the way to the well.

Tony’s left Steve and Wanda at a tree. Wanda’s sitting on a rock, knees hugged against her chest as she stares blankly into space. “She’s a little rattled,” Tony quietly fills them in when they catch sight of her. “We found her in the jungle screaming her head off.”

“What happened?” Clint asks.

“Jabberjays. Found a bunch of ‘em dead around her.”

Jabberjays, blood rain, and lightning. The arena just gets more fun by the minute.

Natasha breaks off from them, heading towards Wanda. Clint opens his mouth to advise her that maybe they’re not a comforting sight, considering they’re still soaked with blood, but he clams right back up when he sees Wanda’s head lift and her eyes lock onto Natasha. Natasha approaches her slowly, asking if she can sit, and Wanda just nods shakily. Natasha sits down on the rock beside Wanda's, resting both her hands on top of her knees. They sit beside each other in silence, coexisting at the most.

Clint watches as both of Wanda's hands wrap around Natasha’s and do not let go.

Steve’s standing in front of a tree with his back to them, very preoccupied with whatever he’s doing. “Look who we found,” Tony sings out. Steve turns around, and immediately the first thing Clint notices is that his face is glistening. It’s wet.

The reaction Clint gets from Steve is not beyond the realm of expected. “Do I wanna know?” he asks.

“Blood rain,” Tony answers for Clint. “Which means your theory’s right.”

Clint glances back and forth between the two of them. “Theory?”

“That this jungle is a nightmare,” is Steve’s answer. “Only good thing about it is the water.”

His face must say it all, because Steve takes a step to the side and it takes everything in Clint not to fall to his feet under the thin stream of water pouring out from the tree. “How’d you figure that out?”

“Got sent a spile,” Steve says, pointing to the tiny thing that’s been jammed into the tree and is allowing the water to fall freely. “I recognized it pretty quickly. Growing up around trees and everything.”

Clint takes a step closer to further inspect the little tool. It's only upon a direct examination that he recognizes it: the metal, purposeless thing now weighing heavy in his pocket is identical.

A spile. Coulson sent them a spile.

_Okay, Coulson. You can have that one._

“How’s Wanda?” Tony asks Steve, and the exclusion from the conversation is Clint’s idea of a pass to shakily cup his hands underneath the trickle of water, splashing the blood off his hands and face. It’s such a relief that he doesn’t even care when he hits his knees, opening his mouth and allowing the water to pass over his lips.

“Still rattled. She took the water; got a little bit out of her, too. Turns out those were her brother's screams."

"Rogers, you truly are the Wanda whisperer."

Steve shakes his head in dissent. "I don’t think we’re out of the woods. They’re fucking with us.”

Tony scoffs. “Of course they’re fucking with us. That’s what they’re getting paid to do.”

Clint shifts his weight, sitting on his knees and looking up at Steve and Tony. “So, what? We leave?”

“The longer we stay in this jungle, the more I hate it,” he deduces bitterly. “I think we need to head back to the beach and regroup before something else has the chance to jump out at us. Nightfall will give us a little bit of cover. Plus, you and Romanoff look terrifying.”

Clint glances back at Natasha, who’s still sitting next to Wanda and holding both of her hands, talking to her quietly.

His stomach sinks and the water sours when he thinks about the fact he’s going to have to kill Wanda.

He’s going to have to kill all of them. 

♛ ♛ ♛

The alliance is grating on Natasha's nerves.

They’ve been skirting along the edge of the beach just behind the leaves and trees for hours ever since the baking sun came back up; she and Clint have long since gotten rid of the blood rain and let it washed away in the ocean, her braid now undone and red curls frizzing up down her back. It is blisteringly hot and even though having water and food has made the experience less miserable, but it’s like tracker jackers are humming underneath her skin because she can't stop thinking about the fact they've picked up strays. Not just any strays either, but one of her best friends, a barely twenty-something who Natasha is positive can kill her in a heartbeat if they accidentally set her off somehow, and Tony fucking Stark.

This alliance is dead weight. She is plotting a thousand different ways she can reel Clint back from the throes of a bromance and make away with him literally _anywhere_ – she’ll even take the jungle from hell – right now. This is stupid and it’s a waste of time.

But she knows there’s some greater moral ground that Clint’s standing on that she refuses to climb, that he feels they owe the others life in exchange for the water in the trees tip. So she keeps her mouth shut and plots the same way a Career would, the way a Career does.

She wonders if Mack’s still alive.

Eventually, they decide to stop the wandering around and settle down onto a secluded part of the beach for lunch. Natasha forces Wanda off of her ass to help catch shellfish in the water while the boys take up water duty.

Wanda’s humming something under her breath while they work, and even though it only adds to the laundry list of things that’s making Natasha want to rip her own throat out, it piques her interest.

“What’s that you’re humming?” she asks, keeping her eyes trained on the water and looking for another crab or two.

“Hm? Oh.” Wanda quietens almost instantly. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s…” Natasha allows her shoulders to relax, sparing a split-second glance back up at the younger girl who’s gone red in the face (the jury’s out on if it’s just a fleeting moment of embarrassment or full-on sunburn). “The song. What is it?”

“Something very old,” she replies. “Do you ever have memories that are so old that they don’t feel like they belong to you anymore?”

“All the time,” Natasha answers. She has more memories that belong to a stranger than she does that belong to herself.

Wanda bends down, retrieving another clam from the ocean floor and adding it to the tiny leaf pouch slung across her chest that she managed to make herself while they walked, putting her hands to use. Her face scrunches up as she tries to recall. “I think it’s a song my mother used to sing to me and my brother when we were little. Before she died.”

It’s Natasha’s turn for a half-hearted, “Oh.” Wanda smiles in response, thin lipped and not at all reassuring.

She’s comforting herself in the one way she knows how, and Natasha almost pities her. (She refuses to do so, if only because everyone – including herself – has looked at Wanda at some point like a ticking time bomb and handled her with kid gloves for years. She’s had enough pity for a lifetime and if Natasha’s going to be the only person to treat her like a person, then she’s the only one.)

Natasha’s just about to spear through another fish when the same gong from earlier that night starts going off again. She and Wanda both look up, trying to find the source of it but failing. Twelve strikes, same as last time.

She tries to catch Wanda’s gaze, but Wanda’s already looking out into the distance at something else. Natasha tries to follow her line of sight, it ending somewhere out into the endless greenery of the arena.

There’s then a churning noise, and right when it reaches a wail, lightning erupts from a point in the sky. It’s arguably the biggest lightning strike she’s ever seen in an arena, even larger than the storms in Thor’s first arena, and its target is a tall tree that seems to tower over the rest of them.

“Lightning after twelve,” she hears Wanda mutter under her breath.

It’s just a simple statement pointing out the obvious, but Natasha’s fully immersed in the Games. She’s drawing on years of dusty training that she’s shaken the cobwebs off of and letting them flood into her mind once again, letting them shape her and mold her into exactly what she needs to be.

 _Pull back,_ a tiny voice commands her. _Look at the whole picture._

“Lightning after twelve,” Natasha whispers to herself, allowing the words to mull over in her mouth as well as her ears.

And then it hits her just as hard as the tidal wave that they’d watched ravage the opposite end of the arena a few hours ago.

“Wanda?” Green eyes lift from the ocean floor back up to Natasha. “Sing the song. Out loud.”

“What?”

Natasha grinds out every word. "What are the words to the song?”

“Uh...I don’t really remember,” she admits, and Natasha would love nothing more than to scream into the void. But Wanda keeps talking, working her way through the muddled thoughts the same way that Natasha used to do. “Something about a mouse? A mouse running up a clock.”

A clock.

It’s a fucking clock. 

♛ ♛ ♛

Natasha and Wanda have a breakthrough.

“It’s a clock,” Wanda rushes out breathlessly, water splashing around her ankles as she sprints from the water up onto the sand. “Natasha figured it out, it’s a clock.”

Tony services as their voice of confusion. “Clock? What’s a clock?”

“The arena,” Wanda says excitedly, her eyes alive for possibly the first time in the few years Clint has known her. “It’s laid out like a clock.”

Steve lifts his head, scanning around the arena. “Oh my god,” he mutters, apparently the next to join their super exclusive club of understanding. His eyes snap to Wanda. “It’s a clock.”

Wanda nods, about to burst. “It’s a clock.”

Clint grabs a stick and draws a circle in the sand, recreating the same picture of the water in the middle of the arena. Cornucopia island in the middle, spokes stretching out to the jungle. He sees it as soon as he gets it drawn – there are twelve sections in all, which is why there were two tribute pedestals per wedge. It’s a clock.

“Twelve o’clock,” Natasha begins, pointing off at a tree in the distance. “Is the lightning. It strikes that tree. And after that is the blood rain. We got the full force of that.”

“The tidal wave is at ten or eleven,” Wanda adds, pointing at the two sectors closest to the one Clint’s drawn a lightning bolt. “And the jabberjays are somewhere in one of the others.”

“It explains why the rain didn’t follow us last night,” Natasha explains, looking up at Clint. “We were back in the lightning tree wedge. It couldn’t touch us there.”

If it wouldn't have resulted in a never ending commentary from Tony Stark, Clint would have grabbed Natasha and kissed her square on the mouth.

Because of this revelation, they decide that they’ll stick to the secluded parts of the beach, just beyond the mouth of the jungle where the horrors await. None of the other tributes have shown – Clint believes that because they’ve essentially staked their claim on it, no one else will move in. He’s at least going to hold to it until he sees Mack charging at him with a spear.

They’re all exhausted, so they spend the majority of the day in the sand just at the lip of the jungle where they have some shade provided by the foliage, relaxing.

Natasha sits with him, which he cherishes, because he knows that every nerve inside of her is screaming to run.

The sunlight takes to her in a way he’s never seen. Albeit being artificial, it doesn’t compare to the sun in the Capitol. Her hair has long since lost the braid and now hangs loose down her back, red curls glinting gold and creating a halo on top of her head. The sun even finds its way into her eyes and brightens them, a wild, rich green just like the jungle.

Something around her neck catches the afternoon light, too. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?”

He shifts some of her hair off of her shoulders, a finger tracing the silver chain that loops down below her wetsuit. “This,” he hums.

Self-consciously, Natasha reaches up and adjusts the chain. “It’s my token.”

Coulson had given him one of his playing cards on the night after the interviews to take as his token, handing it to him face down. “I don’t need it anymore. Think you might make better use of it,” he’d explained. It wasn’t until Clint flipped it over that he understood. Ace. (It now sits inside his wetsuit, somewhere up on his arm.) 

Carefully, he threads his finger underneath the chain and pulls, coaxing the rest of it out from underneath her wetsuit. She’s gone still underneath him, her breathing cut off as the anticipation consumes her.

A very tiny charm finally pops out, resting against the hollow of her neck. The sun finds it and the metal glitters. Clint tucks the charm under his finger and holds it out to get a better look.

An arrow.

Her eyes are waiting for his when he looks up, the air snagged in the column of his throat. He knows she won’t say anything, but it’s okay, because everything that she would is written in the very way she looks at him.

They go back to watching the water (and Steve and Tony debate on the proper way to skip rocks) but their hands find each other, twining together in the hidden space between their knees. He is hers, she is his, and the rest of the world doesn’t matter in that moment.

The moment drags on – it’s an uneventful Games all around. They’re just sitting and waiting. On what, they don’t know, but they have extended its invitation and are trying to kill the dead space of time in receiving a response. For someone like Natasha, she is itching to move and do something, move the Games along at her own pace, but for Clint, it provides a moment to dial back and be present.

He may not know what, but he knows why: none of them want to be the very thing that kickstarts the action. Defense is much easier a position to adopt than offense.

They all seem to be doing the bare minimum now, just waiting for more cannons to sound from the depths of the murderous jungle. Clint and Natasha offer to go into the jungle to get more water, bring back something other than shellfish for dinner. Even though time has melted away from them today, the only threat they should have in this sector is the possibility of another tribute leaping out.

They don’t go too far; Natasha hammers the spile into a tree and collects water in the woven leaf containers that Wanda’s made, and Clint tries to get a look into the trees for more of the animals he and Natasha had found the night before for dinner.

“Go ahead,” she mutters over the humming jungle. “Ask.”

She knows him best. “How long have you had the necklace?”

“Yelena gave it to me for my birthday right before Seventy. She thought it was a joke. Or that it’d serve as some kind of motivation. I dunno.”

“Yelena’s got good taste.”

“Don’t give her something else to gloat about, her head's big enough as it is.”

Clint laughs, hard to bite the smile back that is rapidly unfurling over his face. He spots a few of the rat-looking things scurrying along a branch, knocking them out of the tree with ease in single shots. He wipes arrows off on leaves so he can reuse them, steadily moving along.

It isn’t long before his steps die out, fading until he is frozen in place. 

He keeps his eyes up, hand carefully twitching by his side. The rat things aren’t the only animals that seem to take to the tree branches – there are two large, hideous monkey mutts prowling the branches, watching him closely. He makes a point not to make eye contact, because they are not his target and he doesn’t want to become theirs.

“Natasha?” he says calmly, watching as more monkeys begin to cluster and crowd on the branches near him. Slowly, he moves his hand towards his quiver, meticulous in the pace of his motion.

“Yeah?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“What—” Her voice cuts off into silence. Clint doesn’t dare turn around to see what’s shut her up. He just keeps slowly reaching into the quiver, his fingertips brushing over the very tip of an arrowhead.

“Natasha,” he tries again, the words coming out strangled. “We need to make it back to the beach.”

“Yep,” she replies blankly.

“You tell me when.”

It’s a boldly naïve assumption to make, that they will somehow have the upperhand and get to strike first. Clint’s hand just wraps around the shaft of an arrow when a monkey sails out of the thick of the jungle, teeth bared and claws out. He whips the arrow from the quiver and fires, the monkey dead once he hits the ground in a massive heap of fur.

Chaos explodes.

Monkeys are screaming and Clint’s firing arrow after arrow, trying to keep the monkeys at bay. Natasha’s behind him, throwing knives into their throats and zapping those that get too close with her Widow's Bites as she tries to clear a path to the beach while Clint covers her six. They are everywhere, hardly escapable as they charge and try their luck. “Natasha, talk to me!” he yells at one point, twirling an arrow between his fingers and stabbing a monkey directly in the chest.

“What’s there to say?” she retorts back over the screeches. “I can’t get a clear path!”

 _Shit_. “Go,” he says without a second thought, ignoring the way that gravity plummets into his stomach like a stone. “I’ll cover you.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I’ll be behind you, just _go_.”

“Clint, I am not leaving you here—”

“For the love of god, Natasha, go!” The words rip out of his throat in frustration as he uses one arm to push her forward before darting back into his quiver and pulling an arrow.

But she doesn’t get very far, because the monkeys, albeit mutts, are programmed to be just as intuitive as they are primitive. They spring out of the trees and from what might as well be the ground itself, lunging for them with teeth gnashing. She’s still fighting more than she is gaining ground towards the beach.

A monkey leaps off of a branch and knocks him backwards, faintly hearing Natasha’s shout before he’s plunged underwater into a small pond. He uses the bow to protect himself, shoving upwards so the monkey is just barely held back from sinking his teeth into his face. The monkey bites through the water, trying to inch forward, and Clint holds his breath until the lack of oxygen is burning in his lungs.

Suddenly the monkey goes limp and is being kicked off of him, a hand plummeting into the water and yanking him back to the surface.

Natasha, of course, worry splashed over her face. “I’m good,” Clint pants, wiping the water from his eyes. “I’m good.”

She helps him up with one hand and throws another knife between a monkey’s eyes with the other.

The monkeys just keep coming and they have no choice but to fight them off.

“This way!” Clint hears another voice over the howling of the stupid fucking mutts, silently thanking whatever deity he definitely doesn’t believe in that Stark or Rogers have noticed their absence and come to rescue them.

But it isn’t Stark, or Rogers, or anyone in their alliance.

Thor and Bruce come crashing through the trees as they beat monkeys off of them left and right, screeching to a halt at the sight when they realize they aren't alone in the fray. Clint’s blood runs cold.

For a moment it’s as though the four of them aren’t being pounded by a never-ending gang of monkey mutts, it’s just them locked in a standoff. Bruce looks anxious beyond all belief, and Thor is looking right at Natasha. Natasha’s stilled as well, and Clint knows what is happening.

Careers don’t take kindly to Careers who ditch the pack. Even if it is a completely different circumstance, habits die hard – and this one is about to cost her. Kate flashes before his eyes, the way she and Teddy had snuck out only for Marin to betray them and kill one in their sleep.

The way Natasha and the boy from her district, James, had shared a similar moment of frozen panic in her arena at the feast, shocked to see the other alive.

Thor’s hand twitches onto his hammer, a weapon that they’ve specifically made just for him judging by the trademark shape of the hammer’s head.

Danger is prickling off of him in waves, Clint’s instincts fueling the motion of him reaching for the arrow to do what he has to do. From the corner of his eye, he sees it – monkey, taking advantage of the standstill they’ve all stupidly come to, its target even clearer than Clint’s or Thor’s, and Clint doesn’t hesitate.

He knocks Natasha out of the way, bow and arrow clattering to the ground as the monkey collides with him and sinks its teeth in.

And then there’s pain.

Blinding pain.

There’s pain until there isn’t pain anymore, and that’s how Clint knows it’s the end.

Natasha’s screams hack away at his heart, the only clear thing among the swimming cloudiness in his head. “Help me!” she screams at Thor and Bruce, because she’s got one of his arms slung around her neck as she tries to help him up but she can’t bear his full weight.

Someone scoops up the other side and they more or less drag him through the jungle, his feet trailing behind him like dead weights.

“Hang on,” Natasha is commanding in his ear, her voice fierce with the determination that’s beginning to splinter as the sobs try to kick down the doors to their cages. “Just hang on.”

He clings to her as hard as he can, with every ounce of strength he has left.

They burst through the trees and his vision is starting to fill with black spots as the oxygen flow to his brain begins to cease. Tony, Steve, and Wanda are there, faces pale with shock as Natasha and whoever else is carrying him beelines straight into the ocean. “What the hell happened?” one of them keeps asking over and over again, sounding so distant it’s like the echo of a statement.

Natasha ignores them. Instead, she carries him out into the ocean. Whoever has helped her carry him this far lets go, and she lays him out to float on his back where his weightlessness allows her to hold him in her arms. Natasha is warm, her heartbeat steady, and as she lowers her own body into the water to pull him up, he feels a sigh escape his lungs. 

He finds her face, just like it’s a star, and the contented smile bleeds out across his mouth. She’s okay.

He tries to reach up, tries to touch her face again and commit it to this very last memory, but his arm feels so much heavier than it used to be. “You’re an idiot,” she says, the tears dripping down her face as she strokes his hair back. “You are such a pain in the ass, do you hear me? Trying…trying to die on me…”

“’S okay,” he slurs out, the words almost unintelligible when they bubble off of his lips. Breathing requires more work than it ever did, and with his fading strength he clings to her. “T…Tasha…”

She shakes her head, red hair fanning out, and the fleeting thought appears in his mind that this is the only moment of heaven he’ll ever be granted. “You can’t die on me,” she whispers, and the pain in her voice is so palpable that his heart breaks over and over again, knowing he is the hammer. “You can’t die on me.”

He just smiles up at her, tries to keep the smile on his face even though he doesn’t have any strength left to give. Death is inevitable - he is choosing to welcome it as an old friend, taking it by the hand so it will never touch her. Nothing hurts, he tries to tell her, hopes she can read in his irises through the tears that are obstructing her eyes. He tries to tell her he loves her, that he’s always loved her and will always love her, but the words don’t come.

“Look up,” she finally whispers to him. He wants to tell her no, that her face needs to be the last thing he sees. “It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, Clint. Look up.”

She tips his chin back to help him, because he has lost the ability to move. He closes his eyes and imprints the last moment of her into his brain, hopes that it’s tattooed on his soul and will be allowed to come with him into whatever awaits him.

“Look up, my love,” he hears her say, so he does.

The sky is gold, just like Natasha’s hair in the sunlight.

♛ ♛ ♛

The color has left the world.

Natasha watches as the sunlight bleeds out from the sky, drenching the world in a dozen colors before they run out and they're back in the throes of nightfall. 

Wanda has to coax – then pull – her out of the water, forcing her to let his body go so the hovercraft can take him back to the Capitol. What happens to the dead tributes? It’s never a question she’s pondered, mostly because she’s never truly cared. She didn’t care what happened between their deaths and them being shipped back to their districts in wooden boxes, because it just meant she and Yelena were one step closer to home.

Now all she wants to do is find some way into that hovercraft, some way to be with him.

He’s leaving.

Left.

He’s _left._

Wanda tells her this as she guides Natasha’s arms back, letting Clint float out to sea and his blood seep into the sea until the cannon goes off. “He’s gone, Natasha,” she whispers. “You have to let him go.”

Thor apologizes over and over and over again. It’s like he knows all his words bounce right off of her and refuse to stick. (“You have to kill me,” she’d told him off to the side in front of One’s chariot. Appall left an ugly handprint on his face, like she’d slapped him, but she plowed through. “In Two, they tell us once the pack breaks up, you kill the others if they come stumbling back into sight. When the pack breaks up, I need you to be the one to kill me.” It’s pleading, and begging, and one step shy of being on her hands and knees. “I don’t expect to make it out of this arena alive. I don’t _want_ to. You have to promise you’ll kill me.” And he did – begrudgingly so, but he did.)

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice trembling. She can tell he means it, too. “I didn’t—I froze, Natasha, those monkeys, they were everywhere, and I couldn’t…I’m sorry.”

At some point, she finally mumbles a meaningless, “It’s okay.” It’s just to get him to shut up. It’s not okay, not by a long shot, but if it shuts him up and leaves her in silence.

The hovercraft comes and takes Clint’s body.

She feels nothing.

Thor and Bruce are absorbed by their alliance, but Natasha doesn’t care. They all talk around her – not to her, not with her, not even at her, but around her, and she doesn’t care. They talk about how they need to come up with a plan, how they’re going to move forward, how they’re going to get _her_ to move forward, but she doesn’t care. Her last reason to care is gone, headed back to the Capitol to be fitted for a wooden coffin.

She hopes Phil is there. She hopes Fury breaks every door down for Phil to be there with him.

She hopes Kate was waiting on him and took his hand when he took his last breath.

No one wants to let her take the first watch while they sleep, but no one wants to argue with her either, so they give her first watch with Steve, who’s job is specifically to watch over her. She kind of hates that they know her as well as Clint does. “She’ll try and kill herself,” Tony hisses. “Once none of us are looking, she’ll bolt.”

He’s as smart as people give him credit for and then some.

She sees Clint's face in the sky that night and has to look away - she sets off into the jungle where the trees obstruct the sky and there's some hoping horror looking for a victim to sink its teeth into.

Steve lets her go, because he knows she'll come back when she doesn't find what she's looking for.

(The anthem goes on and on and on. Apparently, Clint is not the only other death of the day. Daisy, Carol, Janet, so many of the others: they're all gone. It has to be a record for the most deaths in the least amount of time.)

In the safety of the jungle, it’s easy to feel as though no one is watching her – even though that couldn’t be farther from the truth; the entirety of Panem is watching with bated breath to see her fall apart – and allows herself to break a little. “Dammit,” she swears under her breath, hands knotted in her hair and fingers tugging on the roots as she grinds her teeth together. “Dammit, dammit, _dammit._ ”

Clint is dead.

She is in the fucking Hunger Games _again_ and Clint’s dead. 

The sobs claw their way down her throat, suffocating her as the reality settles in. Years after years of successes in her back pocket has not prepared her for the ultimate failure, the one failure that has sent her collapsing in on herself. She failed to keep Clint alive and she does not know how to live with the way it hollows her out. It's like she is right back at the beginning with not even the wind left in her hands. She screams through her gritted teeth, the tears like acid as they streak across her face. Her frustration is at a boiling point to where she could rip her own skin off, nails digging into the flesh of her scalp. She sinks down into the dirt beside a tree and cries until she can’t breathe.

She forces herself to take a deep breath and pulls herself off of the ground. She refuses to give the Capitol an ounce of her pain. _Do not cry, Natalia_ , Ivan’s ghost prods her. _They do not want your tears._

They don’t deserve her tears, she thinks.

She finds her way back to Steve, dropping back down onto the sand with her knees hugged against her chest and a hand absently twisting the arrow charm as she looks out at the water.

“I’m sorry, Natasha,” he finally breaks the silence flowing around them. “I knew you were close.”

Close is almost an offensive deduction to make. She loved him.

She knows Steve is trying to comfort her, willing to give her whatever it is she needs in this moment. He gifts her with space and she clutches to it as tightly as she does her necklace.

Wanda is the one who comes to take her place, sending her off to sleep. Natasha wants to argue but somewhere Wanda’s backbone has sprouted and she’s using it freely, refusing to hear anything Natasha has to say unless it’s an agreement to rest.

Natasha lays on the ground a few feet away from Thor, arms wrapped around herself as a means of self-comfort and trying to imagine them as Clint’s or even Yelena’s (she hopes Yelena isn’t watching this, that Fury will know to keep her away from the recaps and the televisions) as her tears seep into the sand. Her sleep is restless, plagued with nightmares of monkeys and blood rain and the gaping hole in Clint’s chest. 

The sunrise is painful. The sky is hard to look at. Natasha is empty.

Tony has a plan.

He wants to replicate the stunt from his arena to try and take out the remaining tributes. “It’s a terrible idea,” Steve says, to which Natasha quietly agrees with, but Tony will take no negative criticism.

“That lightning rod? The water? It’s like the Gamemakers _want_ us to fry everything that moves.” Natasha very seriously doubts that. “Look, you might think it’s a bad idea, but we are no closer to eliminating any of the other tributes. Mack is a smart man. He and Elena have probably figured out that the arena’s a clock too, and they’re keeping on the move. The arena can’t kill anyone once you crack the code, which means we’ve got to do it ourselves.”

They’re somewhat divided, looking to Natasha to take a side (and likely service as the final say).

She doesn’t care, and she tells them this.

Tony looks as though he’d like to punch her. She wishes he’d slit her throat instead.

Wanda and Tony are the ones who hatch out the plan. Bruce gypped some sort of wire from the Cornucopia before he took off for the heels, and while he was planning on using it for handmade garrotes if it came to it, Tony finds it a better purpose. They’re going to run the wire around the beach, and then somehow send it straight into the lightning that strikes at midnight. The hope is that when the other tributes see they’ve left the beach unclaimed, they’ll take it for themselves to keep from the jaws of the jungle, and the damp sand under their feet will be their death sentence.

Natasha sees about a dozen holes in the plan, the largest one being figuring out a way to get the wire to meet the lightning.

Tony keeps insisting that someone should shoot an arrow or throw a knife into the lightning, but there is a gaping vacancy in that position and they all know it, all of them refusing to say it because they are tip-toeing around Natasha like she’s Wanda all of a sudden.

 _It should have been Clint,_ Natasha thinks bitterly. He's the one this was designed for. Sending a wire into the air from a distance, the silent kill. It's his signature and he is no longer there to sign.

It should have been Clint who got the crown twice over.

It should have been Clint, the victor of all victors, the one who gets to go back home and live on in whatever glory that the Capitol manufactures.

It should have been Clint who lived, but it wasn't, and it is a loop her brain cannot stop playing.

They spend the majority of the day walking in circles around the beach - waiting for a sign to figure out what time on the clock they're at and where their destination is. Everyone switches off on carrying the wire, delegating Natasha as the person who gets the most time to hold it because they’re almost itching to put her to use somehow – like it will give her purpose, give her a reason to pull herself together. She walks beside Steve, who along with Wanda is the only one treating her like she’s still a person (even if she isn’t sure she’s one anymore). 

Her silence means she has better access to the whispers. The alliance is going to break wide open after they electrocute whoever – or no one – and no one is making plans to take her along. She finds relief in that. She doesn’t want to be someone they adopt or absorb into their miniature alliances out of pity. She wants to be alone, wants to end this already and be done.

The day goes by fast. Another cannon goes off, and the hovercraft has to make several trips to fetch the tribute that something in the jungle has mauled to pieces. Phil sends Natasha a parachute with food inside, a gift that was most likely meant for Clint but now void in his death.

The card inside reads, _He loved you. Dying to save you was how he wanted it._

Natasha bites down on the inside of her cheek until she draws blood trying to suppress the tears. 

Phil’s gift is in vain – she passes it off to Wanda, insisting that she’s not hungry but that Wanda should take it. Clint's gift of life will meet the same fate.

They finally reach the lightning tree’s wedge right as the sun begins to set, braving back inside the jungle and heading for the lightning tree. As far as they know, they’re safe until the hour begins – they’ll peel off into the blood rain sector just to be absolutely safe and then disperse from there. Tony and Bruce work, muttering to themselves as they try to figure out things like logistics and trajectories and all other sorts of things that she can’t bring herself to care about anymore. 

They hit a roadblock trying to figure out the last piece of their puzzle, how they get the lightning to meet the wire without a sacrifice. 

“Let it be me,” Natasha suggests, and Tony nearly breaks his neck spinning around.

“What? No. _No_ ,” he repeats, shaking his head as he goes back to fiddling with the wire. “We aren’t doing the martyr thing, Romanoff. Just because your boyfriend died—”

“I’m not asking, Stark.” She kneels down beside him, grabbing his face in his hands and forcing him to look at her. She forces him to look at her bloodshot eyes and the way anguish and grief have wracked her in such a short time, how she doesn’t want this. She has to counteract her failure with a success, and at least this way, her death will mean something. 

Tony slaps her hand off of him. “He died so you wouldn’t have to. If you want that to be for nothing, then that's your choice. I'm not helping you, and not because I'm your friend who wants to see you openly suffer because I _don't_ , but because I'm your friend who thinks you have a shot at getting back home. Besides, you think I want his ghost bringing down an avalanche of karma on my head? We are finding another way. End of discussion.”

The thought flashes across her mind to charge the bites up to full capacity and blast Tony’s ass to kingdom come, show him what a shock looks like, but Steve guides her away so she can take a breath. (She knows Tony means well, but she's tired of having to build her life from dust time and time again and right when she allows herself to grow comfortable, watching someone - the Academy, the Capitol - rip it all away.)

Tony and Bruce figure out a way to get it to work, perhaps the most obvious solution in the book, and Natasha is back to feeling utterly helpless, trapped in her new fate of purgatory as she watches them loop the wire around the tree until the trunk is covered in copper.

Night falls quicker than they expect, and with the anthem comes departure. Steve and Wanda take the wire and set out to dump it on the beach. Tony and Bruce triple check their creation before heading out to the blood rain sector, and Natasha keeps guard with Thor. They aren't supposed to stay long; they're there to ensure no one tries to mess with the trap, to wait until Steve doubles back into the jungle and calls out the signal to clear out. 

Steve never comes. There's never any signal. They were supposed to have plenty of time between this and the lightning, but they are growing too close to the edge for comfort and the eleven o'clock sector is already alive and hissing with whatever horror lies beyond the trees. It's how Natasha knows something is wrong.

"They'd be back by now," she mutters to herself, bending down to examine the wire. "They should be back by now."

Thor has a half-hearted excuse that neither of them buy, one that Natasha doesn't listen to all that closely because she is too busy mulling over the wire.

She gives it a slight tug, and it comes skittering back, and that is when she realizes that someone's cut the wire. 

Someone has foiled their plan, and midnight is looming over them.

"Shit," she swears, beginning to frantically reel the wire in until she finds the loose end. "Thor, you've got to get out of here."

"What are you talking about?"

"Something cut the wire. Steve and Wanda didn't make it to the beach, and whoever cut the wire's coming, and—" Natasha sobers up. The plan isn't going to work, the plan she's spent hours trying to do as Tony says and pour her hopes and faith into, a plan that's forced her to stay afloat. The plan has failed.

She cannot fail again. 

She can't save Clint, but she can save the others, her friends (because _fuck_ what the Capitol's thrown back in her face when it comes to getting attached), and that seems to work good enough for her. 

"Thor, you have to go," she repeats stiffly.

"I'll stay with you," he insists. "I'll stay with you until..."

She glances up as his voice fades, losing the words to his emotions. "No, you won't. Now go." The hard line of her lips falters. "Please." 

He goes, looking back over his shoulder with every step he takes.

Midnight is beginning to break over her head as she finds the cut end of the wire. Her hands tremble as she reaches back into the quiver she's had on her back all day, still carrying Clint's spare bow and arrows around like any minute he'll come out from the trees yelling for her to throw them his way.

She remembers the time Clint tried teaching her how to shoot in the training center. 

"I know how to shoot," she'd insisted upon his proposal, sneering at the idea of it. "I spent eight years training in the Academy, I know how to use a bow and arrow."

"Yeah," he'd conceded, mischievous twinkle in his eye as he'd passed her the bow. "But you're just not as good as me."

His breezy confidence had infuriated her because he _was_ damn good but she knew she could be better if she wanted it badly enough, that irritation fueling her to shoot the arrow straight through the heart of the target dozens of yards out. The shot felt like a triumph, shoving the bow back in his hands with a smug smile playing at the corners of her mouth. He'd shot after her, his arrow splintering straight through her own. 

He was right: she wasn't anywhere close enough to his level of skill. They called him Hawkeye with good reason. She had let him teach her a thing or two about archery the way he'd learned it. To learn from the best was to be the best, to be the best was to win. 

As she wraps the wire tight around an arrow, she tells herself that she will not lose.

She strings the arrow into the bow and draws back, searching for her target. 

When she looks up, the sky above is a perfect storm with clouds brewing over her head. Out of nowhere comes a flicker of light and she releases the arrow into it without a hesitation. She chooses to think of the way Clint kissed her.

The world lights up, and then it goes black.


End file.
